Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A construction in which a noun or noun phrase is placed with another as an explanatory equivalent, both having the same syntactic relation to the other elements in the sentence; for example, Copley and the painter in The painter Copley was born in Boston.
  • noun The relationship between such nouns or noun phrases.
  • noun A placing side by side or next to each other.
  • noun Biology The growth of successive layers of a cell wall.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of adding to or together; a setting to; application; a placing together; juxtaposition.
  • noun In grammar: The relation to a noun (or pronoun) of another noun, or in some cases of an adjective or a clause, that is added to it by way of explanation or characterization.
  • noun The relation of two or more nouns (or a noun and pronoun) in the same construction, under the above conditions.
  • noun . In rhetoric, the addition of a parallel word or phrase by way of explanation or illustration of another.
  • A public disputation or examination: now used only as a name of Speech Hay in St. Paul's School, London.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act of adding; application; accretion.
  • noun The putting of things in juxtaposition, or side by side; also, the condition of being so placed.
  • noun (Gram.) The state of two nouns or pronouns, put in the same case, without a connecting word between them; as, I admire Cicero, the orator. Here, the second noun explains or characterizes the first.
  • noun (Physiol.) a mode of growth characteristic of non vascular tissues, in which nutritive matter from the blood is transformed on the surface of an organ into solid unorganized substance.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun grammar A construction in which one noun or noun phrase is placed with another as an explanatory equivalent, either having the same syntactic function in the sentence.
  • noun The relationship between such nouns or noun phrases.
  • noun The quality of being side-by-side, apposed instead of being opposed, not being front-to-front but next to each other.
  • noun A placing of two things side by side, or the fitting together of two things.
  • noun In biology, the growth of successive layers of a cell wall.
  • noun rhetoric Appositio

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a grammatical relation between a word and a noun phrase that follows
  • noun (biology) growth in the thickness of a cell wall by the deposit of successive layers of material
  • noun the act of positioning close together (or side by side)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English apposicioun, from Latin appositiō, appositiōn-, from appositus, past participle of appōnere, to put near; see apposite.]

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