The word for today is…

germane (adj) – Related to a matter at hand, especially to a subject under discussion.

Source : The Free Dictionary

Etymology : “Wert thou a Leopard, thou wert Germane to the Lion.” So wrote William Shakespeare in his tragic play Timon of Athens, using an old (and now-obsolete) sense of germane meaning “closely akin.” Germane derives from the Latin word germen, meaning “bud” or “sprout,” which is also at the root of our verb germinate, meaning “to sprout” or “to begin to develop.” An early sense of germane referred specifically to children of the same parents, who were perhaps seen as being like buds on a single tree. Again, we turn to Shakespeare, who composed this dark line in The Winter’s Tale: “Not he alone shall suffer what wit can make heavy and vengeance bitter; but those that are germane to him … shall all come under the hangman….

Peter is a fourth-generation New Zealander, with his mother's and father's folks having arrived in New Zealand in the 1870s. He lives in Lower Hutt with his wife, some cats and assorted computers. His...