per se
78
7.5
- idiom
- /pɜr seɪ/
- Formal
:
en sí
- It takes more work to show that it's music per SE rather than just rhythm and pitch.
- not per se, but rather
- illegal per se
- economic growth per se
This wasn't a memoir per SE, but it was close.
- This wasn't a memoir per SE, but it was close.
- It's not the technology per SE that makes this possible.
- Knowledge per SE is present in a a mind, right?
- So nicotine addiction does not per SE change your personality.
- Really, ours being, you know, the Vietnamese per SE, we're not that interested.
- I I'm not convinced that consequentialism per SE is a moral disaster.
- When we talk about addiction per SE, we're talking about certain patterns.
- They may still be a quality person per SE, but they're not for you like that.
- It takes more work to show that it's music per SE rather than just rhythm and pitch.
- And yeah, but I don't, Yeah, I don't budget per SE.
- There is nothing wrong with that per SE.
- But meanwhile HTTP itself isn't the Internet per SE.
- And I'm not a woo woo person per SE.
- And it's actually really not fully how karma works per SE for most of us.
Examples
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I mean it's fast and it's food, obviously, but it's not fast food per se.
-
Equity and sustainability, rather than economic growth per se, become the goals of development.
Academic text (1999) -
It's not the technology per SE that makes this possible.
-
Actually, we're not so much concerned with energy per SE, but with power.
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No, it's not love per SE, but the way I interact with them is different.
-
When we talk about addiction per SE, we're talking about certain patterns.
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More important than participation per se may be certain factors associated with athletic participation.
Academic text (2008) -
Of course, complexity per se is not a barrier to modeling.
Academic text (1990) -
So nicotine addiction does not per SE change your personality.
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It's not the technology per se that makes this possible.
Synonyms
53
6.0
When you consider something alone without other things
22
6.4
Part of the basic nature of something
Surface Forms
Morphology
per + se
Per se is a Latin loan meaning ‘by itself’ and its parts are not productive English words for a typical B1 learner, so the meaning is not directly derivable from English knowledge alone. However, the phrase is etymologically compositional (per = by, se = oneself) and is recognizable across many European languages, so there is a partial, language-background-dependent clue to its meaning.
Etymology
Per se comes from Latin. The words per ('by' or 'through') and se ('itself') together mean 'by itself', so per se is used today to say 'taken alone'.