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Apostrophe (figure of speech)

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Apostrophe (Greek ἀποστροφή, apostrophé, "turning away"; the final e being sounded) is an exclamatory figure of speech. It occurs when a speaker breaks off from addressing the audience (e.g. in a play) and directs speech to a third party such as an opposing litigant or some other individual, sometimes absent from the scene. Often the addressee is a personified abstract quality or inanimate object. In dramatic works and poetry written in or translated into English, such a figure of speech is often introduced by the vocative exclamation "O". Poets may apostrophize a beloved, the Muse, God, love, time, or any other entity that can’t respond in reality.

Examples

  • "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" 1 Corinthians 15:55, Saint Paul of Tarsus
  • William Shakespeare
  • "O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, / That I am meek and gentle with these butchers! / Thou art the ruins of the noblest man / That ever lived in the tide of times." Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 1
  • "O God! God!" Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2
  • "Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee! I have thee not, and yet I see thee still." Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 1
  • "O happy dagger! This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die." Romeo and Juliet, act 5, scene 3, 169-170).
  • "To what green altar, O mysterious priest, / Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, / And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?" John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
  • "O eloquent, just, and mighty Death!" Sir Walter Raleigh, A Historie of the World
  • "Thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh just, subtle, and mighty opium!" Thomas de Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
  • "Roll on, thou dark and deep blue Ocean -- roll!" Lord Byron, "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"
  • "Thou glorious sun!" Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "This Lime Tree Bower"
  • "Death, be not proud, though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so." John Donne, "Holy Sonnet X"
  • "And you, Eumaeus..." Homer, the Odyssey
  • "O My friends, there is no friend." Montaigne, originally attributed to Aristotle
  • "Ah Bartleby! Ah Humanity!" Herman Melville, "Bartleby, the Scrivener"
  • "O black night, nurse of the golden eyes!" Electra in Euripides' Electra (c. 410 BC, line 54), in the translation by David Kovacs (1998).
  • "Then come, sweet death, and rid me of this grief." [(Queen Isabel in Edward II by Christopher Marlowe)]

    • References

    Apostrophe (figure of speech) Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA