Word of the Day

: February 25, 2011

apposite

adjective AP-uh-zit

What It Means

: highly pertinent or appropriate : apt

apposite in Context

Before sending the final draft of his novel to his editor, Lyle searched for an apposite quotation that could serve as the book’s epigraph.

"The Venetian merchants who travelled to other lands or cities were especially useful; it is apposite, too, that in a mercantile state, the language of merchants was used as a code." -- From Peter Ackroyd's 2010 book Venice: Pure City

Did You Know?

"Apposite" and "opposite" sound so much alike that you would expect them to have a common ancestor -- and they do. It is the Latin verb "ponere," which means "to put or place." Adding the prefix "ad-" to "ponere" created "apponere," meaning "to place near" or "to apply to," and that branch of the "ponere" family tree led to "apposite." The word is used to describe something that applies well to or is very appropriate for something else, a notion perhaps suggested by the close proximity of two objects. To get "opposite," the prefix "ob-" was added to "ponere" to create "opponere," meaning "to place against or opposite." The related verb "componere," meaning "to put together," gave us "compound" and "composite."