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à propos means apt/appropriate as a noun in french and in English, but the phrase « à propos de … » means “about …” ; which is much more (wait for it) à propos.

à propos means apt/appropriate as a noun in french and in English, but the phrase « à propos de … » means “about …” ; which is much more (wait for it) à propos. It is kind of weird that it was used in Unix wherein only the noun form made sense ; and even with french in mind the “apropos <command>” syntax (without « de ») makes it sound weird. In practice I don't think I've ever used it, and when I was a noob I often lamented the lack of a high-level documentation of Linux which would introduce the appropriate man/info pages.

alxlaz 6y ago
> In practice I don't think I've ever used it, and when I was a noob I often lamented the lack of a high-level documentation of Linux which would introduce the appropriate man/info pages. It was introduced in 3.0BSD, it's pretty old :). As for usage, while I'm not a native French speaker, I don't think I've heard it used as a noun that often. I can't speak (heh :P) for Canadian speakers of French -- perhaps there are different norms for the use of various idioms there, and I learned French in Europe -- but over here I don't think anyone ever had trouble figuring out what the apropos command would do...
- jgtrosh 6y ago
  Not saying it didn't exist, just saying it's not an introductory high-level Linux user-space documentation. Also not saying apropos is incomprehensible, just that 1 it sounds weird as a Frenchman, 2 there could have been a simpler alternative: “about”.
  - alxlaz 6y ago
    Lots of Unix commands could have had better names :). FWIW, though, the noun form is even less uncommon in languages that borrowed the expression from French. In my native language (also a Latin language, so borrowing it was straightforward), its use a noun is very limited. Saying that a book is "full of à-propos" (as in "pleine d’à-propos"), for example, wouldn't mean it's apt, or very relevant, it would mean that it's full of subtle, possibly contrarian or lewd motives. That's more or less how it's used in English, too. To non-French speakers -- given when apropos showed up, the Unix audience was very American-centric --, who've only heard it used in the other sense, it actually sounds very appropriate, possibly even more appropriate than about, given how apropos (the program) works.
    - jgtrosh 6y ago
      Yeah, I guess it's not that bad. (Also it's not a noun, but an adverb, my bad.) Then my only gripe is that it doesn't really sound correct in the <verb> <noun> syntax, but then again many other commands don't either (like cd, more/less/head, man, du)
- jlokier 6y ago
  "apropos of nothing" is a phrase I've heard Canadian English speakers use, and so far nobody else.

alxlaz 6y ago

> In practice I don't think I've ever used it, and when I was a noob I often lamented the lack of a high-level documentation of Linux which would introduce the appropriate man/info pages. It was introduced in 3.0BSD, it's pretty old :). As for usage, while I'm not a native French speaker, I don't think I've heard it used as a noun that often. I can't speak (heh :P) for Canadian speakers of French -- perhaps there are different norms for the use of various idioms there, and I learned French in Europe -- but over here I don't think anyone ever had trouble figuring out what the apropos command would do...

jgtrosh 6y ago
Not saying it didn't exist, just saying it's not an introductory high-level Linux user-space documentation. Also not saying apropos is incomprehensible, just that 1 it sounds weird as a Frenchman, 2 there could have been a simpler alternative: “about”.
- alxlaz 6y ago
  Lots of Unix commands could have had better names :). FWIW, though, the noun form is even less uncommon in languages that borrowed the expression from French. In my native language (also a Latin language, so borrowing it was straightforward), its use a noun is very limited. Saying that a book is "full of à-propos" (as in "pleine d’à-propos"), for example, wouldn't mean it's apt, or very relevant, it would mean that it's full of subtle, possibly contrarian or lewd motives. That's more or less how it's used in English, too. To non-French speakers -- given when apropos showed up, the Unix audience was very American-centric --, who've only heard it used in the other sense, it actually sounds very appropriate, possibly even more appropriate than about, given how apropos (the program) works.
  - jgtrosh 6y ago
    Yeah, I guess it's not that bad. (Also it's not a noun, but an adverb, my bad.) Then my only gripe is that it doesn't really sound correct in the <verb> <noun> syntax, but then again many other commands don't either (like cd, more/less/head, man, du)
jlokier 6y ago
"apropos of nothing" is a phrase I've heard Canadian English speakers use, and so far nobody else.