Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adv. Of, in, or by itself or oneself; intrinsically.
Wiktionary
- adv. By itself; without consideration of extraneous factors.
- adv. As such; as one would expect from the name.
- adv. law As a matter of law.
Etymologies
- From Latin per se ("by itself"), from per ("by, through"), and se ("itself, himself, herself, themselves"). (Wiktionary)
- Latin per sē : per, per + sē, itself. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Theologians agree that in the Hypostatic Union the immediate reason why the Sacred Humanity, though complete and individual, is not a person is that it is not a subsistence, not per se seorsum subsistens.”
“Here, as always and everywhere, he betook himself to his “sinuous, easy, unpolemical” method, and thereby made his repugnance to the proposed change felt and understood in quarters which would never have listened to arguments from Leviticus, or fine distinctions between malum per se and malum prohibitum.”
““Formæ elegantia in Rege laudatur, non quod per se decor oris magni æstimari debeat, sed quia in ipso vultu sæpe reluceat generosa indoles.” —”
“The human nature of Christ does not exist per se seorsum, but in alio, in the Divine Personality of the Word.”
“* [3132] Formæ elegantia in Rege laudatur, non quod per se decor oris magni æstimari debeat, sed quia in ipso vultu sæpe reluceat generosa indoles.”
“The propositio per se is defined by the Schoolmen as one the predicate of which is either a constitutive element or a natural property of the subject.”
“* [6756] Formæ elegantia in Rege laudatur, non quod per se decor oris magni æstimari debeat, sed quia in ipso vultu sæpe reluceat generosa indoles.”
“a man's face per se has no more to do with his worthiness and companionableness than the color of his eyes or the shades of his hair.”
“He does not like to hear him talk and considers him per se "unsafe.”
“Christians per se have no new teaching (mathēma, I. iv.; cp.”
The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘per se’.
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GRE 2014
abase, abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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Visuals
A list of words which yield surprising, beautiful, amusing, or otherwise noteworthy images here on Wordnik.
photochrom, fufluns, thank you, cool l..., postcard, picture postcard, cricket, physiological ill..., Gakuryū Ishii, ametropia, One Froggy Evening, rhodopsin, Santiago Calatrava and 636 more...
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The Universal Calculator
Obviates the need for other devices or calculations--it will have a button for everything, and it will solve everything.
qwerty keyboard, shift key, control, home, end, pause, log, sin, space, enter, plus, numb and 241 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2046 more...
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fancy essay words
hiatus, ontology, exegesis, hermeneutics, dialectics, demiurge, ascertain, contention, eschatological, synecdoche, centripetal, centrifugal and 96 more...
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Vocabulary
shibboleth, verboten, jejune, ostensible, multifarious, quintessence, purportedly, tangential, vacillate, quagmire, wanton, onerous and 74 more...
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Fancy Foreign Words
de facto, Zeitgeist, schadenfreude, apropos, per se, Auteur, tookus, de rigueur, xyst, arrivederci, sotto, troika and 14 more...
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phil vocab 3
genocide, superfluous, warfare, indissoluble, sentient, confound, pernicious, dispose, render, amiable, paradox, puritanical and 36 more...
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bianca's euphonic list
paprika, poignant, poignancy, viscous, subtlety, robust, vehicular, combustion, viscosity, velocity, rotunda, malignant and 18 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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dyy's Words
ambivalence, irony, double-edged sword, paradox, struggle, plunge, buoy, pigeon-hole, ultimately, status quo, fuel, undermine and 230 more...
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my words
interminable, effete, convocation, philistines, malaise, foibles, deputation, anathematized, morass, stalwart, proselytize, abet and 405 more...
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amberella's Words
facetious, behoove, akrasia, schadenfreude, halcyon, vapid, wanderlust, bluestocking, drazel, succinct, literati, geason and 116 more...
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List I
effortless, sloppy, undignified, sprawled, paradigm, asinine, reek, stench, impassive, devoid, meticulously, logical fallacy and 79 more...
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words i like to say
copulate, fornicate, capitulate, elope, mooring, bovine, windowsill, albatross, page, bustle, logic, per se and 2 more...
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Foreign
sub poena, stet, salon, raconteur, quorum, quasi, post mortem, per se, parvenu, motif, minutiae, kaput and 17 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for per se.
PossibleUnderscore Yeah. Thanks c_b. My mind is finally at peace. ;-) Google doesn't answer everything! Jul 24, 2009
chained_bear I think it works better to replace something like "exactly" or "in and of itself." That help any? Jul 24, 2009
PossibleUnderscore I am having severe difficulty understanding what the bleepity bleep this means! Can it replace 'technically' in a sentence? If John says it's 'by itself' but I don't think I could say I am per se. ??:-C Jul 24, 2009
john In and of itself. Latin for "by itself." Mar 6, 2008