apropos

Valid in Scrabble

Scrabble points
11
Words With Friends
13
Letters
7
Pronunciation
/ˌæp.ɹəˈpəʊ/ (UK)
See all 2 pronunciations
/ˌæp.ɹəˈpəʊ/ (UK) · /ˌæp.ɹəˈpoʊ/ (US)

Definition of apropos

7 senses · 4 parts of speech · etymology included

adj

  1. Of an appropriate or pertinent nature.
    “Nothing easier. I received not long ago a map from my friend, Augustus Petermann, at Leipzig. Nothing could be more apropos.”
    “A particularly apropos line many will remember from this film was the closing shot of a Times editorial reading "Is There No Sense of Decency?"”
    “Served outside the shell and sliced in bite-sized pieces, it's as apropos for a first date as a business dinner.”
See all 7 definitions

adj

  1. Of an appropriate or pertinent nature.
    “Nothing easier. I received not long ago a map from my friend, Augustus Petermann, at Leipzig. Nothing could be more apropos.”
    “A particularly apropos line many will remember from this film was the closing shot of a Times editorial reading "Is There No Sense of Decency?"”
    “Served outside the shell and sliced in bite-sized pieces, it's as apropos for a first date as a business dinner.”
  2. By the way, incidental.
    “Sherlock Holmes rose and lit his pipe. "No doubt you think that you are complimenting me in comparing me to [C. Auguste] 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 [Edgar Allan] Poe appeared to imagine."”

prep

  1. Regarding, concerning, in regard to, on the subject of.
    “"Go on, Uncle Max," said Nora pleasantly. "I like to watch your exceptional mind at work. Apropos the disappearance of Geoffrey, and that big old lonely house, you were saying—?"”
    “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).”

adv

  1. By the way.
  2. Timely; at a good time.
  3. To the purpose; appropriately.

noun

  1. (obsolete, uncountable)Fittingness, pertinence.

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

Etymology

Borrowed from French à propos (“on that subject”). Similar in meaning and form, and to some extent etymology, to appropriate, but not a doublet of it.

Anagrams of apropos

2 plays · some not in Scrabble

Find your best play with apropos

See every word you can make from a set of letters that includes apropos, or browse word lists you can mine for high-scoring plays.