contiguity

/ˈkɑntəˌgjuɪdi/

Other forms: contiguities

Use the noun contiguity when you're talking about the state of things being right up next to each other, like the contiguity of two countries that share a border.

You're most likely to come across the word contiguity in a discussion of geography. For example, you could talk about the contiguity of the United States and its northern neighbor, Canada, or the contiguity of New Hampshire and Vermont. Contiguity shares a root with the more common contiguous, the Latin contingere, which means "to touch upon."

Definitions of contiguity

1. noun

   the attribute of being so near as to be touching
   synonyms: adjacency, contiguousness

   type of:

   closeness, nearness

   the spatial property resulting from a relatively small distance