Apostrophe

APOSTROPHE (Gr. intoarpo^. turning away; the final e being sounded), the name given to an exclamatory rhetorical figure of speech, when a speaker or writer breaks off and addresses some one directly in the vocative. The same word (representing, through the French, the Greek droorpo^o? rpoatf&ia., the accent of elision) means also the sign (') for the omission of a letter or letters, e.g. in " don't." In physiology, " apostrophe " is used more precisely hi connexion with its literal meaning of " turning away," e.g. for movement away from the light, in the cue of the accumulation of chlorophyll-corpuscles on the cells of leave*.