apropos

the word 'apropos' entered english in the 17th century from the french phrase 'à propos', meaning 'to the purpose'. the french term itself derives from the latin 'propositus', the past participle of 'proponere', meaning 'to set forth' or 'to propose'. the literal sense, 'to the thing set forth', evolved through french into the modern english meanings of relevance and appropriateness. its journey encapsulates the borrowing of a complete adverbial phrase which then solidified into a single, versatile english word.

this word is a loanword from french, adopted as a whole lexical unit into english. it is not productively segmented using english morphemes.