Definition:
A noun, noun phrase, or series of nouns used to identify or rename another noun, noun phrase, or pronoun. See also:
- What Is an Appositive?
- Apposition
- Appositives in Theroux's "How Curious the Camel"
- Absolutes and Appositives in Frank Conroy's "Midair"
- Sentence Building with Appositives
Etymology:
From the Latin, "to put near"Examples:
- "I have had the great honor to have played with these great veteran ballplayers on my left--Murderers Row, our championship team of 1927. I have had the further honor of living with and playing with these men on my right--the Bronx Bombers, the Yankees of today."
(Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig, The Pride of the Yankees, 1942) - "The Otis Elevator Company, the world’s oldest and biggest elevator manufacturer, claims that its products carry the equivalent of the world’s population every five days."
(Nick Paumgarten, "Up and Then Down," The New Yorker, April 21, 2008) - "The sky was sunless and grey, there was snow in the air, buoyant motes, play things that seethed and floated like the toy flakes inside a crystal."
(Truman Capote, "The Muses Are Heard") - "The essence of loneliness is that one both remembers and hopes, though in vain, in the midst of one's dissolution. Plain nothingness compared to it is a comfort, a kind of hibernation, a tundra of arctic whiteness that negates feeling and want."
(Alexander Theroux, in "An Interview with Alexander Theroux," Review of Contemporary Fiction, Spring 1991) - "The Koeberg Nuclear Power Station, Africa's only nuclear power plant, was inaugurated in 1984 by the apartheid regime and is the major source of electricity for the Western Cape's 4.5 million population."
(Joshua Hammer, "Inside Cape Town," Smithsonian, April 2008) - "The Spectator. Champagne for the brain."
(ad slogan for The Spectator magazine) - "Xerox. The Document Company."
(slogan for Xerox Corporation)
Pronunciation: ah-POS-i-tiv
