apposition
Americannoun
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the act of placing together or bringing into proximity; juxtaposition.
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the addition or application of one thing to another thing.
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Grammar. a syntactic relation between expressions, usually consecutive, that have the same function and the same relation to other elements in the sentence, the second expression identifying or supplementing the first. In Washington, our first president, the phrase our first president is in apposition with Washington.
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Biology. growth of a cell wall by the deposition of new particles in layers on the wall.
noun
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a putting into juxtaposition
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a grammatical construction in which a word, esp a noun phrase, is placed after another to modify its meaning
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biology growth in the thickness of a cell wall by the deposition of successive layers of material Compare intussusception
Other Word Forms
- appositional adjective
- appositionally adverb
Etymology
Origin of apposition
1400–50; late Middle English apposicioun < Late Latin appositiōn- (stem of appositiō ) < Latin apposit ( us ) ( apposite ) + -iōn- -ion
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
They’ve cohered through wet-on-wet mixing into a strange, alienating hybrid color, made even stranger by the apposition of equally thick background strokes of soiled coral.
From New York Times
But other elements were recognizable, like the flat vowels and the plaid shirts and the helpful practicality, like the lonesomeness of the undifferentiated plains, like the apposition of wilderness and chain stores.
From New York Times
The united probe glows wherever two organelles come into close apposition.
From Nature
In her analysis of the causes of repression in her society, Ms. Alexeyeva consistently disputed any neat apposition of Russian despots and Western democratic leaders.
From New York Times
With its unbalanced nouns in apposition, the film’s title hints at the absurdity of the way human beings think.
From The New Yorker
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
