juxtaposition

English

Alternative forms

• juxta-position

Etymology

From French juxtaposition, from Latin iuxtā (“near”) (from Latin iungō (“to join”)) + French position (“position”) (from Latin pōnō (“to place”)).

Pronunciation

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /ˌd͡ʒʌk.stə.pəˈzɪʃ.ən/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

Noun

juxtaposition (countable and uncountable, plural juxtapositions)

1. The nearness of objects with little or no delimiter.
   • 1809, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Friend:

     It is the object of the mechanical atomistic philosophy to confound synthesis with synartesis, or rather with mere juxtaposition of corpuscles separated by invisible interspaces.

   1. (grammar) An absence of linking elements in a group of words that are listed together.

      Example: mother father instead of mother and father

   2. (mathematics) An absence of operators in an expression.

      Using juxtaposition for multiplication saves space when writing longer expressions. ${\displaystyle a\times b}$ collapses to ${\displaystyle ab}$.

      • 2007, Lawrence Moss, Hans-Jörg Tiede, “Applications of Modal Logic in Linguistics”, in P. Blackburn et al., editors, Handbook of Modal Logic, Elsevier, page 1054:

        A fundamental operation on strings is string concatenation which we will denote by juxtaposition.

2. The extra emphasis given to a comparison when the contrasted objects are close together.

   There was a poignant juxtaposition between the boys laughing in the street and the girl crying on the balcony above.

   1. (art) Two or more contrasting sounds, colours, styles etc. placed together for stylistic effect.

      The juxtaposition of the bright yellows on the dark background made the painting appear three dimensional.

   2. (rhetoric) The close placement of two ideas to imply a link that may not exist.

      Example: In 1965 the government was elected; in 1965 the economy took a dive.

Hypernyms

• position (structurally)

Related terms

Translations

Verb

juxtaposition (third-person singular simple present juxtapositions, present participle juxtapositioning, simple past and past participle juxtapositioned)

1. To place in juxtaposition.

See also

• parataxis

References

• Juxtaposition on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• DeLone et. al. (Eds.) (1975). Aspects of Twentieth-Century Music. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. →ISBN. Music.

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ʒyk.sta.po.zi.sjɔ̃/

• Audio

  (file)

Noun

juxtaposition f (plural juxtapositions)

1. juxtaposition

Further reading

• “juxtaposition”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.