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apposite: msg#00028culture.language.word-of-the-day
**************************************************************** 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 **************************************************************** 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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