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Glite Dictionary
ex officio

ex officio

8.4
Because someone has an official job or position, they are a member without being chosen again
  • idiom
  • /ɛks ɒˈfɪʃioʊ/
  • Formal
translation icon : ex officio
  • The president of the college's student government association sits ex officio.

Examples

  • CDAC is made up of seven members; six serve ex officio, and one member is appointed by the Governor.

    Blog text (4)

  • Completely different, I note that Senator John McCain is an ex officio member of the Senate Committee on Intelligence.

    Blog text (9)

  • Worse, his ex officio view of what science is and is not requires that he cannot put forth a fundamental causal or interpretive line that accounts, in the final analysis, for any historical phenomenon.

    Academic text (2002)

  • He has changed the system for appointing the federal parliament's upper house; instead of regional governors and legislative speakers serving ex officio, governors and legislatures now appoint representatives.

    Academic text (2002)

  • The president of the college's student government association sits ex officio.

  • The Minority Leader also serves as an ex officio member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

  • CDAC is made up of seven members; six serve ex officio, and one member is appointed by the Governor.

Synonyms

by right of office
vsex officio
  • Formal
7.5

A right that comes from a person's official job

emphasizes automatic status from the position rather than separate appointment

Surface Forms

ex officio positive

Morphology

ex + officio

The meaning is compositionally built from Latin ex ‘from/out of’ + officio ‘office/duty’, so the sense 'by virtue of one's office' (because of the position someone holds) is directly derivable from the constituents. Although the items are formal/Latin borrowings and may be unfamiliar to many learners, the semantic combination is transparent for anyone who knows the constituent meanings.

Etymology

Ex officio comes from old official words: ex ('from') and officio ('office'). So it means someone is part of a group or attends a meeting because of the job they hold, not because they were chosen separately.