Also 6–8 -phus. [a. Fr. apostrophe, ad. L. apostrophus, a. Gr. ἡ ἀπόστροφος, prop. adj. (sc. προσῳδία the accent) ‘of turning away, or elision.’ It ought to be of three syllables in Eng. as in French, but has been ignorantly confused with the prec. word.]
† 1. The omission of one or more letters in a word. Obs.
1611. [See APOSTROPHIZE 2.]
c. 1620. A. Hume, Orthogr. Brit. Tong. (1865), 23. Apostrophus is the ejecting of a letter or a syllab out of one word, or out betuene tuae.
1642. Howell, For. Trav. (Arb.), 39. The freedom [of Spanish] from Apostrophes which are the knots of a Language.
2. The sign (’) used to indicate the omission of a letter or letters, as in o’er, thro’, can’t; and as a sign of the modern English genitive or possessive case, as in boy’s, boys’, men’s, conscience’, Moses’.
In the latter case, it originally marked merely the omission of e in writing, as in fox’s, James’s, and was equally common in the nominative plural, esp. of proper names and foreign words (as folio’s = folioes); it was gradually disused in the latter, and extended to all possessives, even where e had not been previously written, as in man’s, children’s, conscience’ sake. This was not yet established in 1725.
1588. Shaks., L. L. L., IV. ii. 123. You finde not the apostraphas [? apostrophus], and so misse the accent.
1727. W. Mather, Yng. Man’s Comp., 35. An Apostrophus (commonly, but not rightly called an Apostrophe) thus markt (’) … as Th’ appurtenances, [etc.].
1876. Mason, Eng. Gram., 29. It is … an unmeaning process to put the apostrophe after the [possessive] plural s (as birds’), because no vowel has been dropped there.
