Something that’s “apposite” (AP-uh-zit) – from the Latin for “to set or put near” – is very appropriate and relevant.
Example (as used by Alan D. Sokal and Jean Bricmont in Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science): “Suppose, for example, that in a theoretical physics seminar we were to explain a very technical concept in quantum field theory by comparing it to the concept of aporia in Derridean literary theory. Our audience of physicists would wonder, quite reasonably, what is the goal of such a metaphor – whether or not it is apposite – apart from displaying our own erudition.”
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Copyright ETR, LLC, 2008
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