Dear Merriam-Webster,

Today in Language class my students were working on editing the DOL (Daily Oral Language) when they were presented with this sentence:


"Mrs. James led us past all the peoples near the stars dressing rooms."


After fixing the word "peoples" I called on a student who stated, "You need to apostrophy the word 'stars'." Of course the rest of the class guffawed and told the student that 'apostrophy' was not a word. But, Merriam-Webster, I ask you, why not?



apostrophy* [uh-pos-truh-fahy]

-verb

1. to add an apostrophe to a given word



Origin: 2009; Ms. H's 3rd grade classroom

*spelling is open to suggestions