Juxtaposition arrived in English in the 1660s, borrowed whole from French juxtaposition. Split it in half and it basically defines itself: juxta is a Latin word meaning "next to" or "right up against," and position goes back to Latin positio — literally "a placing" — itself rooted in the verb ponere, "to place." Chain those together and you get exactly what the word does — the act of placing things close beside one another. Both pieces even share a distant ancestor in the Proto-Indo-European root yeug-, "to join," the same root that eventually gave English words like yoke and join.

These days the word has a whole second career as a technical term. Art teachers, photographers, and film editors all reach for "juxtaposition" as shorthand for deliberately putting two contrasting elements in the same frame so they create a meaning neither one has on its own — a Renaissance painter setting brilliant light against deep shadow, or a movie cutting straight from a wedding toast to a funeral eulogy. The word describes the technique so precisely that critics rarely bother finding a substitute for it.

Some people you just meet, and some people you recognize — like you were always going to find each other eventually. Next, we meet the word for that instant, bone-deep sense of belonging.