apposition

/ˈæpəˌzɪʃən/

Other forms: appositions

When you put two things right next to each other, you can call that apposition. The apposition of your dog and your cat makes an adorable photograph.

Though you can use the noun apposition to talk about the positioning of objects — or words — close together, it's usually found in scientific or technical writing. In grammar, an apposition occurs when two words or phrases are placed beside each other in a sentence so that one describes or defines the other. An example is the phrase "my dog Woofers," in which "my dog" is in apposition to the name "Woofers."

Definitions of apposition

1. noun

   the act of positioning close together (or side by side)
   synonyms: collocation, juxtaposition

   types:

   tessellation

   the careful juxtaposition of shapes in a pattern

   type of:

   emplacement, locating, location, placement, position, positioning

   the act of putting something in a certain place
2. noun

   a grammatical relation between a word and a noun phrase that follows
   “`Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer' is an example of apposition”

   type of:

   limiting, modification, qualifying

   the grammatical relation that exists when a word qualifies the meaning of the phrase
3. noun

   (biology) growth in the thickness of a cell wall by the deposit of successive layers of material
   type of:

   development, growing, growth, maturation, ontogenesis, ontogeny

   (biology) the process of an individual organism growing organically; a purely biological unfolding of events involved in an organism changing gradually from a simple to a more complex level