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apposite: msg#00028

culture.language.word-of-the-day

Subject: apposite

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Will you travel further or farther for your summer vacation?
Take along our Concise Dictionary of English Usage and find out!
http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/book.pl?conusg.htm&6
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The Word of the Day for June 29 is:

apposite \AP-uh-zit\ adjective
: highly pertinent or appropriate : apt

Example sentence:
"It is a lucid work, written in simple English and amply illustrated by
apposite examples...." (Judith N. Shklar, _Social Research_, September 22, 2004)

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 "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."







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