apostrophize
Americanverb (used with object)
verb (used without object)
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of apostrophize
First recorded in 1605–15; apostrophe 2 + -ize
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Or that the prolix Gaev — a man as likely to apostrophize a piece of furniture as the stars above — keeps promising he’ll be quiet.
From New York Times ● Dec. 5, 2011
Even Sweden's cautious Premier Per Albin Hansson was stirred to apostrophize a common Scandinavian labor market, economic collaboration, common Nordic citizenship.
From Time Magazine Archive
So did one medieval minstrel apostrophize his hero, suggesting that a good hunting dog might be a duke's best friend.
From Time Magazine Archive
No bright and overwhelming genius appeared in 1947 to light the way and apostrophize the age.
From Time Magazine Archive
It was evident that Javert must have been exasperated beyond measure before he would permit himself to apostrophize the sergeant as he had done, after the mayor's suggestion that Fantine should be set at liberty.
From Les Misérables by Hapgood, Isabel Florence
Ali Tepelena, once apostrophized by Byron, was real; Albania certainly exists.
From New York Times ● Aug. 24, 2018
Sealing the message of political friendship was a video of the center’s namesake, apostrophized as “the greatest Irish American,” speaking during his visit to Ireland in 1963.
From Washington Post ● May 18, 2016
Intriguingly, many of the cultural figures whom Harrison has apostrophized in her art are men—Amerigo Vespucci, Charles Darwin, and Claude Lévi-Strauss, as well as DiCaprio, Cheney, and, in his “Scarface” role, Al Pacino.
From The New Yorker ● Dec. 15, 2014
Mr. Mumford is not one to forget that Whitman apostrophized a locomotive, that Emerson thought a swift transatlantic liner could be as beautiful as a star, that Thoreau enjoyed wind singing on telegraph wires.
From Time Magazine Archive
They surrounded the mitrailleuses, apostrophized the sergeant in command of the gun, saying, "This is shameful; what are you doing there?"
From History of the Commune of 1871 by Lissagary, P.
So why do we still read him, and why do so many people still flock to his plays, despite their archaisms lichened with footnotes and, to citizens of our ironic century, his easily parodied apostrophizing?
From Washington Post ● Sep. 8, 2021
Now, when she sat down to write in her notebook, she found herself apostrophizing anything that crossed her mind, addressing concepts and objects directly, trying to name their component parts.
From The New Yorker ● Sep. 22, 2016
On glimpsing her, Poe might have written his poem "To Helen" apostrophizing the most beguiling beauty of the ancient world.
From Time Magazine Archive
By way of apostrophizing his movement, Smith, 68, has just erected a $250,000 snow-white statue of Jesus Christ atop 1,500-ft.
From Time Magazine Archive
"May the devil fly away with you for a pair of knaves!" he said beneath his breath, apostrophizing the vanished shadows.
From The Duke's Motto A Melodrama by McCarthy, Justin H. (Justin Huntly)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
