Apropos

[divingworldchampion]

I listen to an American podcast and one of the presenters uses the word apropos when I think he actually just means appropriate. In my mind it means fitting but the dictionary says it can also mean appropriate. Have I misunderstood all this time!? He says it a surprising amount of times so it irks me.

Doesn’t it just mean ‘on the topic of’? So if they were chatting and they say spoke about oranges, he may say ‘apropos oranges- have you tried they new Innocent juice?’

I rarely use the word but I've always thought it meant concerning, regarding or on the subject of a particular topic. For example, "Sally was late for work again, apropos of which the manager would speak to her".

I would have thought it is usually usually triggered by a noun, as in the example above with oranges. Or a topic, a discussion about something that someone links to something else not yet mentioned.
I also think it is one of those words that people try to use to make themselves seem more academic.

I’ve only ever seen it used as “apropos of nothing”, as in coming from nothing, like when a new topic is introduced out of the blue and has nothing to do with what’s already being discussed.

Well I agree with all of you, concerning a noun or a topic, thank you.
Here’s a bit from the transcript to demonstrate how he used it which is clearly wrong!

“All right, Lyrics to Live By this week, I mentioned Binaural, Paul. What song did we choose from Binaural?

We Went With Grievance.

Oh, very apropos.

I think so.”

'Correction' ?
Oh! very apt? I suggest

Yeah, it’s wrong in that context. If you want to abbreviate ‘appropriate’ then apt would be, well, apt.

Apt would indeed be apt.

Agree that it doesn’t work in that context.

The phrase ‘apropos nothing’ validates that ‘apropos’ is used normally relating to a previous topic, hence ‘apropos nothing’ introduces a new topic into the conversation. 😊

Well the host also mentioned the Jools Holland show and thought it was a Dutch music programme so time for me to stop listening I think!

Based on my teenagers recent habit of throwing shortened words around everywhere my guess would be that the commentator isn’t using the word ‘apropos’. They are abbreviating appropriate, possibly (probably) without knowing that there is a word apropos…

*I have terrible spelling and grammar skills and stay away from pedants corner for that reason, apologies if I’ve made any obvious errors!

Hmm, this isn't quite right. Apropos implies something more tangential. So could often be substituted by "talking of which". In your example, the manager talking to her is directly related to Sally being late. You would use apropos in a more distant sense. For example, "Sally was late for work again, apropos of which, have you seen there's a new policy on late-comers?"

Ah OK. I see what you mean.

It sounds like the presenter was abbreviating appropriate in a particular way, like cray-cray for crazy, or po-po for police, but doesn’t know that apropos is actually a word or what it means.

Yes, more ‘related to’ than ‘about’.