Apropos
Pronunciation
- UK IPA: /ˌæp.ɹəˈpəʊ/
- US IPA: /ˌæp.ɹəˈpoʊ/
- Rhymes: -əʊ
Origin
Borrowing from fr à propos.
Full definition of apropos
Adjective
apropos
- Of an appropriate or pertinent nature.
- 1877, Jules Verne, translated by Frederick Amadeus Malleson, , ,Nothing easier. I received not long ago a map from my friend, Augustus Petermann, at Leipzig. Nothing could be more apropos.
- by the way, incidental.
- 1877, Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes rose and lit his pipe. "No doubt you think that you are complimenting me in comparing me to Dupin," he observed. "Now, in my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow. That trick of his of breaking in on his friends' thoughts with an apropos remark after a quarter of an hour's silence is really very showy and superficial. He had some analytical genius, no doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appeared to imagine."
Synonyms
- (by the way) by the way, incidentally, incidental
Preposition
- Regarding or concerning.
- 2011, Jeremy Harding, "Diary", London Review of Books, 33.VII:Few have the same root and branch obsession with the recent past or the avenger’s recall (‘the necessity for long memory and sarcasm in argument’, as he wrote apropos the old left intelligentsia in New York).