It's Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 2nd.

Today's word is

is Prox, PROX I M I T Y, proximity is a noun.

Proximity is the quality or state of being near or proximate.

The word proximity is synonymous with the word

closeness. Here's the word used in a sentence from Wired by Amy Edmondson.

Research on Employee Proximity conducted at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that sitting near senior colleagues led junior engineers to learn more and be less likely to leave their jobs, an effect that was particularly pronounced for women and younger employees.

The fact that the star closest in proximity to our sun, approximately 4.2 light years distant, is named Proxima Sentori is no coincidence.

The history of the word proximity hinges on the idea of closeness, both physical and metaphorical.

English speakers borrowed the word from middle French, which in turn acquired it from

the forms of the Latin adjective Proximus, meaning nearest or next. Close relatives of proximity in English

include proximal, proximate, and the somewhat more rare a proximal, meaning contiguous. A number of other languages

including Catalan, Portuguese and Italian have similar words that come from the

Latin word proximous. With your word of the day I'm Peter Sokolowski.

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