Plural of apostrophe: either the punctuation mark (') used to show missing letters or possession, or a literary device where a speaker addresses someone absent or non-human.
From Greek apostrophos (turned away). The punctuation mark evolved from the rhetorical device—scribes used it to mark where letters were omitted, both meanings coexisting in modern English.
It's wild that one tiny mark handles two completely different jobs—it marks where letters disappeared (like 'don't' from 'do not') AND it's become invisible in so many possessives that people fight about whether 'its' or 'it's' on the internet constantly!
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