Apostrophe (figure of speech)

Apostrophe (Greek ἀποστροφή, apostrophé, "turning away"; the final e being sounded) is an exclamatory rhetorical figure of speech, when a speaker or writer breaks off and directs speech to an imaginary person or abstract quality or idea. In dramatic works and poetry written in or translated into English, such a figure of speech is often introduced by the exclamation "O".

Examples

• "God deliver me from fools." English proverb
• "Where, my death, is thy sting? where, O death, thy victory?" 1 Corinthians 15:55, Saint Paul of Tarsus
• "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." Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 1
• "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." Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 1
• "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
• "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..." the Odyssey
• "O My friends, there is no friend." Montaigne, originally attributed to Aristotle
• "Ah Bartleby! Ah Humanity!", from Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville
• "O black night, nurse of the golden eyes!" Electra in Euripides' Electra (c. 410 BCE, 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 Malowe)]
• "O happy dagger! This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die." Romeo and Juliet (V, iii, 169-170).
• "O captain, my captain!" O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman

References

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

See also

• Literary technique
• Fourth wall