propinquity

From Old French propinquité or Latin propinquitas, from propinquus ‘neighbouring’ (from prope ‘near’).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /pɹəˈpɪŋ.kwɪ.ti/

propinquity (countable and uncountable, plural propinquities)

1. Nearness or proximity.
   • 1904, Edith Wharton, "The Other Two":

     Some experimental spirits could not resist the diversion of throwing Varick and his former wife together, and there were those who thought he found a zest in the propinquity.

   • 1964, Melvin M. Webber et al, "The Urban Place and the Non-Place Urban Realm" in Explorations into Urban Structure:

     Community without propinquity

   • 1973, Kyril Bonfiglioli, Don't Point That Thing at Me, Penguin 2001, p. 70:

     Surely, too, it would be a waste of an agent, for after several hours of propinquity I could scarcely fail to recognise him in the future.

   • 1985, Anthony Burgess, The Kingdom of the Wicked:

     There was also the question of Julius’s glandular responses to the almost daily propinquity of his Empress, so naked under her lawn.

   • 1993, Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations? (Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993), 29:

     Geographical propinquity gives rise to conflicting territorial claims from Bosnia to Mindanao.

2. Affiliation or similarity.
   • 1608, William Shakespeare, The New Clarendon Shakespeare, King Lear, Oxford University Press: 1957, act I scene I: 112-115:

     "Here I disclaim my all my paternal care,

     Propinquity, and property of blood,

     And as a stranger to my heart and me

     Hold thee from this for ever. ..."

   • 1970, Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (English translation), Routledge 2002, p. xviii:

     What is impossible is not the propinquity of the things listed, but the very site on which their propinquity would be possible.

   • 1979, Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 86 (1979):

     [A] person's mere propinquity to others independently suspected of criminal activity does not, without more, give rise to probable cause to search that person.

   • 1997, Don DeLillo, Underworld:

     Decent people out there. Russ wants to believe they are still assembled in some recognizable manner, the kindred unit at the radio, old lines and ties and propinquities.

   • 2012, Andrew Marr (heard at the Leveson inquiry.)

     Propinquity and corruption don't always go side by side.

• (proximity): appropinquity (obsolete)