Apostrophectomy

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The removal of incorrect apostrophes, especially those wrongly used to form plurals (greengrocer's apostrophes).

    "apostrophectomy is a famously painful procedure, and the rate of reinfection is very high. there are also many attested cases where a perfectly functional apostrophe was inappropriately excised."

Example

More examples

"apostrophectomy is a famously painful procedure, and the rate of reinfection is very high. there are also many attested cases where a perfectly functional apostrophe was inappropriately excised."

Etymology

From apostrophe + -ectomy.

Related phrases

greengrocer's apostrophe

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.