Word of the Day

Saturday, July 14, 2001

juxtaposition

\juhk-stuh-puh-ZISH-uhn\ , noun;

The act or an instance of placing in nearness or side by side.

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Quotes:

I had sent from Egypt two Coptic sculptures from the fifth and sixth centuries and placed them in juxtaposition with a contemporary stone mask from Zimbabwe, with striking effect.

-- Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Unvanquished: A U.S.-U.N. Saga

This aesthetically pleasing juxtaposition of contradictions is one of the hallmarks of poetry.

-- Ann Marlowe, "Hyphenated Life", New York Times, October 15, 2000

One of the things that made the diary so poignant . . . is the awful juxtaposition of the ordinary and the horrific, the mundane and the unimaginable.

-- Michiko Kakutani, "When a Spirited Teen-Ager Faced the Unimaginable", New York Times, September 29, 1998

Origin:

Juxtaposition comes from Latin juxta, "near" + positio, "position," from the past participle of ponere, "to put, to place." The related verb juxtapose means "to place side by side."