by virtue of
25
4.5
- idiom
- Formal
:
en virtud de
- So these are, you know, people who have authority and power by virtue of their acknowledged skills.
- simply by virtue of
- by virtue of the fact
- by virtue of their age
He is saying that all human beings, by virtue of being rational, are free.
- He is saying that all human beings, by virtue of being rational, are free.
- This idea that children are resilient by virtue of being children is not true.
- So this room became a room by virtue of the enclosure.
- I'm so overexposed by virtue of what I do.
- And often times we've created a life for ourselves by virtue of an inauthentic version of ourselves.
- You have to find an indirect test to see their presence by virtue of their impact on their environment.
- All of the things that we're seeking in wrong headed ways come by virtue of doing that.
- With friends, we can both hope for and expect safety and acceptance by virtue of having lots of different kinds of friends.
- That upon hyper oxygenation or increasing blood flow to the brain, largely by virtue of exercise.
Examples
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They arrive at their high standing in their community by virtue of birth.
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And, and, and basically what he did was he got all these documents by virtue of a Freedom of Information request.
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So for that, I think that it's by virtue of kind of where people live.
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That we, there are some things that are real by virtue of the fact that we agree that they exist.
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So you have many more people operating at a high end just just by virtue of the population numbers.
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So basic social rights are are are granted to people just by virtue of being born.
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So we make payroll by virtue of our cash flow.
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Many legislators believe that military officers, by virtue of their training, possess expertise that civilians cannot match.
Academic text (1990) -
By virtue of the authority vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife.
-
He was promoted by virtue of his hard work and dedication to the project.
Synonyms
∞
1.0
For a reason that explains why something happened
66
1.7
Because of something such as illness or rain
1
7.5
Because of a quality, fact, or agreement
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
by + virtue + of
The phrase uses 'virtue' in a figurative, formal sense ('by means of' or 'because of') rather than its prototypical meaning of moral goodness, so a learner who knows the literal words may not reliably infer the idiomatic causal sense. There is a partial compositional link (something’s 'virtue' can imply its merit or reason), and cognate constructions exist in many languages, but the extended, formal usage makes the expression only partially predictable for a B1 learner.
Etymology
By virtue of comes from an older meaning of virtue as a kind of power or special quality someone or something has. So by virtue of means 'because of' or 'due to' that power or quality.