Apropos of Apropos

Apropos of nothing, I’m going to tell you a little about the word apropos today.

If you know a tiny bit of French (un peu), you might recognize that there are two words in apropos: a and propos. By a, I actually mean à—the French word meaning “to” or “at”, indicating something headed in the direction of the second word, propos.

Propos traces back to Old French, where it was commonly used to indicate a plan or purpose… or a proposition. Apropos of apropos, the proposition angle is the one that really stuck.

The Latin roots of propos are even more revealing. Pro is right there in everyday English speech. All by itself, to be a pro means you’re a professional or an expert at something. The pros and cons tell you the good and bad of a situation, but the Romans thought of this as more like for and against. Even better, it was more like forward and backward.

Forward was good, and backward was bad. Hold onto that in your mind for a moment.

The second part of propos (the pos part) came from the word ponere, which meant something like to put or to place. If you added the forward/good prefix, you ended up with a forward placement of sorts. Placing yourself forward meant preparing.

Propos, then, meant an area of discussion.

Appropriately enough, apropos has a few cousins in English that are probably a bit more familiar to you. Appropriate isn’t exactly apropos with a suffix slapped on, but instead traces its central word nugget to proprius, not propos. Prius means earlier or before, so when you add the pro in front if it, it’s sort of recursive—like in the direction of what came before.

Appropriate behavior points right back at you, doesn’t it? Similarly, proprietary information is stuff you might want to keep to yourself, and you will hopefully tend to want to do the proper thing. You personally might own property.

If you feel it’s appropriate to do so, leave me a comment to let me know whether you use apropos or any of these other words regularly.