Literary terms · AP English Literature, AP English Language, SAT Reading and Writing, ACT Reading
Apostrophe
Apostrophe: A figure of speech in which a speaker directly addresses an absent person, an object or an abstract idea.
By the CollegePrepRoom editorial team · Updated · How we write and check these pages
What it means
In apostrophe, the speaker talks to someone or something that cannot answer: a dead friend, the moon, death, a city. It often signals strong emotion and can reveal the speaker's attitude toward the thing addressed.
Apostrophe as a figure of speech is unrelated to the punctuation mark of the same name.
Example
'Old house, you kept our secrets better than we did' addresses the house as if it could listen, conveying the speaker's affection and guilt.
On the exam
Explain what the act of addressing someone absent reveals about the speaker's feelings.