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Comment by pricci | Hacker News Reader

I'm aware of apropos, but I usually forget how the command is named.

edit: I forget how apropos is named.

    alias halp=apropos

I used to have a hard time remembering apropos because I assumed 'apropos' was some sort of unixy mincing of another word or abbreviation or something, and I couldn't figure out what it meant. You know, like 'mkdir' means "MaKe DIRectory"

But it turns out apropos is just a regular word. Once I learned this, I haven't had any more trouble with it.

apropos : Of an appropriate or pertinent nature.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/apropos

Ohh I always thought "apropos" was from the French expression "à propos (de)... " which means "about". I naïvely believed that the person who coded this command must be French.

The English usage is borrowed from French![0] However, it doesn't look like the original author was French[1]. I shouldn't be, but I am quite surprised to see that the apropos command as we know it is 43 years old!

[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/apropos [1] https://www.mankier.com/1/apropos.mandoc#History

You are correct about the origin except it came from French into English long ago.

It's an ordinary word in Danish, meaning 'about something'. It can be used at the start of a sentence. Example: "Apropos vegetables I hate tomatoes".

Which is exactly the use case for apropos, which searches "the manual page names and descriptions"[0] for whatever term you've entered.

[0] https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/apropos.1.html

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