propinquity

noun

1. (countable, literary, uncountable)Nearness or proximity

   “Some experimental spirits could not resist the diversion of throwing Varick and his former wife together, and there were those who thought he found a zest in the propinquity.”

   “Yet, never before in human history has it been so easy to communicate across long distances. Never before have men been able to maintain intimate and continuing contact with others across thousands of miles; never has intimacy been so independent of spatial propinquity.”

   “Surely, too, it would be a waste of an agent, for after several hours of propinquity I could scarcely fail to recognise him in the future.”

   “There was also the question of Julius’s glandular responses to the almost daily propinquity of his Empress, so naked under her lawn.”

   “Geographical propinquity gives rise to conflicting territorial claims from Bosnia to Mindanao.”

2. (countable, literary, uncountable)Affiliation or similarity.

   “Heere I diſclaime all my Paternall care, / Propinquity and property of blood, / And as a ſtranger to my heart and me, / Hold thee from this for euer.”

   “What is impossible is not the propinquity of the things listed, but the very site on which their propinquity would be possible.”

   “[A] person's mere propinquity to others independently suspected of criminal activity does not, without more, give rise to probable cause to search that person.”

   “Decent people out there. Russ wants to believe they are still assembled in some recognizable manner, the kindred unit at the radio, old lines and ties and propinquities.”

   “Propinquity and corruption don't always go side by side.”