Appositeness

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The quality of being appropriate and fitting to the matter at hand
2. The characteristic of having a direct and suitable connection to a particular situation
3. The state of being relevant, proper, or well-suited to the context or purpose

Etymology: Appositeness is a plain formation: the adjective "apposite" with the suffix "-ness" added to turn a quality into a noun. The adjective itself comes from Latin "appositus", the past participle of "apponere", meaning "to put near or place beside", and so the root sense is literally one thing set alongside another. That physical image of placement is what gradually gave way to the modern sense of a remark or example that fits its moment exactly. The suffix "-ness" has an older pedigree than the Latin borrowing. It descends from Old English "-nes", a noun-forming ending that has been attached to native adjectives for well over a thousand years, as in "kindness" and "darkness". English speakers have been free to add it to borrowed adjectives too, which is how a learned Latin-derived word like "apposite" acquired a fully English abstract noun.

Synonyms: relevance, pertinence, appropriateness, suitability, fittingness

Antonyms: irrelevance, inappropriateness, unsuitability, disconnection, disregard