Apropos
adj, adv, noun, prep ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Fittingness, pertinence. obsolete, uncountable
- 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."
- 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.""
- 1 of an appropriate or pertinent nature wordnet
- 1 By the way.
- 2 Timely; at a good time.
- 3 To the purpose; appropriately.
- 1 introducing a different topic wordnet
- 2 at an opportune time wordnet
- 1 Regarding, concerning, in regard to, on the subject of
"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)."
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"I thought his remarks very apropos."
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.
Related phrases
More for "apropos"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.