Word of the Day Archive
Sunday November 9, 2003
juxtaposition \juhk-stuh-puh-ZISH-uhn\ , noun:
The act or an instance of placing in nearness or side by side.
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
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."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for juxtaposition
