Apostrophe

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /əˈpɒs.tɹə.fi/

Definitions

1. A punctuation symbol that serves to indicate possession or the omission of certain letters in combined forms
2. A typographic symbol that indicates omitted letters in contractions or denotes possession in certain nouns
3. A punctuation mark used to indicate ownership or to show that letters have been left out in a word ; a rhetorical device where a speaker or writer talks directly to someone who is not present or cannot respond

Etymology: The mark that shows possession, as in "the dog's bowl," began life as a Greek rhetorical term with a quite different job. In ancient Greek, "apostrophos" (literally "turned away") described the act of breaking off a speech to address someone absent or an abstract idea. Grammarians later borrowed the word for the mark indicating that a letter had been dropped, as in "don't" or "o'clock," where the sound was "turned away" from the spelling. The Greek word came to English by two routes. One was through French, and the other directly from Latin, which had taken it over as "apostrophus" and "apostrophe." Both paths lead back to the same root: "apo" (away) plus "strephein" (to turn). Notice that the possessive use is the younger one. Its elision sense came first, and the mark only gained its role marking ownership later, which is why the same punctuation mark now does two very different jobs.

Synonyms: punctuation mark