Relevant

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /ˈɹɛləvənt/

Definitions

1. Having a meaningful connection or bearing on the matter at hand
2. Pertaining to the subject at hand or having significance in the current context
3. Associated with or applicable to a particular situation or issue in a meaningful way

Etymology: The surprise here is that "relevant" once had nothing to do with connection. In Latin, "relevans" was the present participle of "relevare," meaning "lift up again, lighten, relieve," built from "re-" ("again") and "levare" ("lift"). That same root gives us "levity" and "elevate," and the sense of lightening a load is still visible in the word's ancestry. The path to our modern sense runs through Scottish law. In Scots legal circles from the early 1500s, "relevant" came to mean "legally pertinent," describing evidence or argument that bore on the case at hand. The idea of something that lifts or helps a case forward gradually narrowed into the idea of something that bears on a matter. English first took up the word in the 1700s, and it was the broader sense of bearing on a topic that spread, so that today we use it of anything connected to the question in hand.

Synonyms: pertinent, applicable, related, appropriate, connected

Antonyms: irrelevant, unrelated