This week’s theme
Latin terms in English

This week’s words
modus operandi
per se
ex post
bona fide
per contra

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(puhr SAY)

MEANING:

adverb: In or by itself; intrinsically.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin per se, translation of Greek kath auto. Earliest documented use: 1475. Perse is something different.

NOTES:

Today’s term makes an appearance in the word ampersand which is a corruption of “and per se and”. What does it mean? Earlier the & symbol was considered the 27th letter of the alphabet. Yes, they used to say “A to ampersand” instead of “A to Z”. It’d be awkward to recite the alphabet as “... X Y Z &” (and what?), so schoolchildren reciting the alphabet would end it with “& per se and”, meaning the symbol &, by itself, is the word “and”.
Where did the symbol & come from? It’s a corruption of “et”, the Latin word for “and”. That explains why sometimes “etc.” is written as “&c”.

USAGE:

“SHERLOC will not be searching for life per se—only for the trail it leaves behind.”
Corey Powell; Have We Found Alien Life?; Popular Science (New York); Feb 2015.

See more usage examples of per se in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: