Etymology

Borrowed from LatinCategory:English terms borrowed from Latin#PERSECategory:English terms derived from Latin#PERSE per sē (“by itself”), from per (“by, through”) and sē (“itself, himself, herself, themselves”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /pəˈseɪ/Category:English terms with IPA pronunciation#PERSE

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

    Category:English terms with audio pronunciation#PERSE
• (General American) IPA^(key): /pɚˈseɪ/, /pɚˈsiː/Category:English terms with IPA pronunciation#PERSE

• Audio (US):

  (file)

  Category:English terms with audio pronunciation#PERSE

• Audio (General American):

  (file)

  Category:English terms with audio pronunciation#PERSE
• (General Australian) IPA^(key): /pəˈsæɪ/Category:English terms with IPA pronunciation#PERSE
• Rhymes: -eɪ, (General American) -iːCategory:Rhymes:English/eɪ#PERSECategory:Rhymes:English/eɪ/2 syllables#PERSECategory:Rhymes:English/iː#PERSECategory:Rhymes:English/iː/2 syllables#PERSE

Adverb

per se (not comparable)Category:English lemmas#PERSECategory:English adverbs#PERSECategory:English uncomparable adverbs#PERSECategory:English multiword terms#PERSECategory:English entries with incorrect language header#PERSECategory:Pages with entries#PER%20SECategory:Pages with 7 entries#PER%20SE

2. Without determination by or involvement of extraneous factors; by its very nature.

   Synonyms: by itself, in itself, in and of itself, as such (in certain senses), sui generis (occasionally, in one of its senses)

   Near-synonyms: by definition, by nature, essentially, in essence, ipso facto, intrinsically; see also Thesaurus:intrinsically

   Some people say that a hangover is caused by impurities in the drink, not by the alcohol per se.

   Category:English terms with usage examples#PERSE

   • c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]:

     They say he is a very man per se,
     And stands alone.

     Category:English terms with quotations#PERSE

   • 1877, Walter Henry Hill, Elements of Philosophy: Comprising Logic and Ontology Or General Metaphysics, page 220:

     A proposition is per se known as regards itself , but not per se known as regards us, when it has no medium of proof a priori, nor is its truth directly and immediately evident to us on first apprehending the terms.

     Category:English terms with quotations#PERSE

   • 1909, Emlin McClain, A Digest of Decisions of the Supreme Court of Iowa: From the Organization of the Territory Until the End of January, 1908 ..., page 3672:

     What words actionable. to subject the offender to contempt, and deprive him of public confidence, and to accuse one who is a notary public of procuring a false affidavit to be made before him is libelous and actionable per se.

     Category:English terms with quotations#PERSE

   • 1941, George Ryley Scott, Phallic Worship: A History of Sex and Sex Rites in Relation to the Religions of All Races from Antiquity to the Present Day, London: T. Werner Laurie, page vi:

     Always have the greatest excesses and the most reprehensible practices been committed when backed up by or given the sanction of religion. But all this represents no derogation of the original phallic cult per se. It merely proves that the gods have always been what we have made them.

     Category:English terms with quotations#PERSE

   • 2007, Tima Smith, Per Se: An Anthology of Fiction, page 176:

     It's not that I've got anything against kids per se, but I believe in discipline.

     Category:English terms with quotations#PERSE

4. (nonstandardCategory:English nonstandard terms#PERSE, more loosely, chiefly in the negativeCategory:English negative polarity items#PERSE) In a true or literal sense; as one would expect from the name or description.

   Synonyms: exactly, strictly speaking, sensu stricto, stricto sensu, truly

   It's not a museum per se, but they do have some interesting artefacts.

   Category:English terms with usage examples#PERSE

   • a. 1998, anonymous conversationalists, quoted in, 1998, Tom Chiarella, Writing Dialogue, Story Press, →ISBN, page 12:

     I take photographs. But I'm not a photographer.

     Per se.

     Right. Not per se.

     Right.

   • 2012 March 22, Pamela Burnard, Musical Creativities in Practice, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 202:

     It's not a race against the competition per se: that's not how it feels to me when I'm working on a project.

     Category:English terms with quotations#PERSE

   • 2012, Tes Hilaire, Deliver Me From Temptation: A Novel of the Paladin Warriors:

     Annoyed, frustrated, edgy, but not angry per se.

     Category:English terms with quotations#PERSE

   • 2013 February 12, Kjell-Ake Nordquist, Gods and Arms: On Religion and Armed Conflict, Wipf and Stock Publishers, →ISBN, page 70:

     As we shall see, since the 1960s, the ELN, although not a religious movement per se, represents an interesting amalgam of beliefs that helped serve in recruitment, commitment, and identification of a revolutionary belief and ritual.

     Category:English terms with quotations#PERSE

   • 2015, Thomas Goltz, Georgia Diary: A Chronicle of War and Political Chaos in the ...:

     Through this lingual haze we quickly established that Suleyman was a member of “Batono” Abashidze's personal militia, but not a policeman per se

     Category:English terms with quotations#PERSE

   • 2016 September 19, Karen Karbo, Motherhood Made a Man Out of Me: A Novel, Hawthorne Books, →ISBN:

     What she meant was, It's not a baby per se. It's a He-bean (she was already certain the bean was a boy).

     Category:English terms with quotations#PERSE

   • 2017 May 22, Stephen Pimpare, Ghettos, Tramps, and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen, Oxford University Press, →ISBN:

     He sells a story, flirts with a waitress, looks handsome, has writer's block, and feels sorry for himself, but it's not a story about the Depression per se: it could be set in any time period, almost anywhere.

     Category:English terms with quotations#PERSE

   • 2021 October 27, Jeanne Sahadi, “How stablecoin is different than other cryptocurrencies … and how it’s not”, in CNN‎:

     There is no legal federal framework yet for how to regulate stablecoins per se.

     Category:English terms with quotations#PERSE

5. (philosophyCategory:en:Philosophy#PERSE) As the principle of its own determination and positing itself.
   • 1988, J. van Rijen, Aspects of Aristotle’s Logic of Modalities, page 137:

     Everything not applying per se in one of these two senses is called an accident.

     Category:English terms with quotations#PERSE

   • a. 2005, Jacques Maritain, An EPZ Introduction to Philosophy, A&C Black, →ISBN, page 153:

     Peter is per se alive, endowed with intellect, and the faculty of laughter, the artist is per se one who fashions objects. But Peter is per accidens a sufferer from influenza

     Category:English terms with quotations#PERSE

   • 2015, Gaven Kerr, Aquinas's Way to God: The Proof in De Ente et Essentia:

     Thus, unless there exists some being that exists per se, the origination of esse in a chain of composites itself remains unexplained and quite mysterious. And the existence of a being that exists per se is affirmed through a denial of an infinite regress of essence-esse composites causing other such composites.

     Category:English terms with quotations#PERSE

   • 2022 October 15, Gaven Kerr, Collected Articles on the Existence of God, BoD – Books on Demand, →ISBN, page 218:

     Aquinas rejects this position, because then God would not be per se necessary, but would be necessitated by his own divine nature to create. Hence to be per se necessary, God must be free to create.

     Category:English terms with quotations#PERSE

6. (lawCategory:en:Law#PERSE) Not leaving discretion to the judge to take into account additional factors that could rebut the judgment, deriving the qualification from the statute.

   Coordinate terms: eo ipso, ipso facto

   The law makes drunk driving illegal per se.Category:English terms with usage examples#PERSE

   • 1986, Administrative Per Se: A Summary of State Forms and Procedures:

     In an effort to assist states that may have recently adopted or expect to adopt administrative per se, NHTSA has collected sample copies of forms and a brief description of the administrative procedures from selected states with in-place programs.

     Category:English terms with quotations#PERSE

Adjective

per se (not comparable)Category:English lemmas#PERSECategory:English adjectives#PERSECategory:English uncomparable adjectives#PERSECategory:English multiword terms#PERSECategory:English entries with incorrect language header#PERSECategory:Pages with entries#PER%20SECategory:Pages with 7 entries#PER%20SE

1. (philosophyCategory:en:Philosophy#PERSE) Positing itself and being a principle of its own determination.
   • 1980, Mortimer Adler, How to Prove There Is a God: Mortimer J. Adler's Writings and Thoughts About God, Open Court, →ISBN, page 197:

     Hence, God would have to be the immediate per se cause of some natural motions, but not of all. But no known natural motion is without a natural motion as its immediate per se cause.

     Category:English terms with quotations#PERSE

   • 1988, J. van Rijen, Aspects of Aristotle’s Logic of Modalities, page 137:

     Before stating at 74b5ff. that the connection between the subject and predicate of the premisses of scientific inferences must not be accidental but per se, he introduces the technical terms 'about all' ( 'kata pantos' ) and 'per se' (' kath' hauto ') in order to clarify the meaning of this proviso.

     Category:English terms with quotations#PERSE

   • 2014, Barrie Fleet, Simplicius: On Aristotle Physics 2, page 97:

     The per se cause of the house is the building skill and the craftsman who exercises it, while the per accidens cause is the fair-skinned or the artistic man. Alexander says: 'Aristotle says that just as anything that exists is one thing per se and another per accidens (by “being what it is per se” he means the substance, and by "what is per accidens" he means the attributes of the substance), so a cause is one thing per se and another per accidens.

     Category:English terms with quotations#PERSE

   • 2015, Gaven Kerr, Aquinas's Way to God: The Proof in De Ente et Essentia:

     They hold to the impossibility of an actual per se infinity, because in a per se series the effects have a dependence on their causes, in which case if the series were infinite, the ultimate effect would be dependent on an infinite chain of causes; and since an infinity cannot be traversed, the being of such an effect would never be explained.

     Category:English terms with quotations#PERSE

2. (lawCategory:en:Law#PERSE) That does not leave discretion to the judge to take into account additional factors that could rebut the judgment, deriving the qualification from the statute.
   • 1981, Hugh Laurence Ross, Deterrence of the Drinking Driver: An International Survey‎, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Transportation, page 80:

     Until recently Denmark hesitated to adopt a formal per se law, preferring to give more discretion to its judges, but the general practice was to take blood tests and to convict those accused under the classical law if the blood alcohol concentration was greater than 100 mg./100 ml.

     Category:English terms with quotations#PERSE

   • 2006, Sheldon Kimmel, How and why the Per Se Rule Against Price-fixing Went Wrong, page 1:

     CBS (441 U.S. 1 [1979]) explains, the per se rule against price-fixing isn't to be taken literally.

     Category:English terms with quotations#PERSE

References

• “per se”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “per se”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.

Anagrams

• peers, Reeps, spere, esper, Prees, Peres, pères, speer, Spree, spree, Esper, Peers, Serpe, prees

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from LatinCategory:Danish terms borrowed from Latin#PER%20SECategory:Danish unadapted borrowings from Latin#PER%20SECategory:Danish terms derived from Latin#PER%20SE per sē.

Adverb

per seCategory:Danish lemmas#PER%20SECategory:Danish adverbs#PER%20SECategory:Danish multiword terms#PER%20SECategory:Danish entries with incorrect language header#PER%20SECategory:Pages with entries#PER%20SECategory:Pages with 7 entries#PER%20SE

1. per se

   Coordinate terms: i sig selv, som sådan

Further reading

• “per se” in Den Danske Ordbog

Alternative forms

• persé (obsolete since spelling reform of 1995)

Etymology

From LatinCategory:Dutch terms derived from Latin#PER%20SE per sē (“by itself”), from per (“by, through”) and sē (“itself, himself, herself, themselves”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pɛrˈseː/Category:Dutch terms with IPA pronunciation#PER%20SE

• Audio:

  (file)

  Category:Dutch terms with audio pronunciation#PER%20SE

Adverb

per seCategory:Dutch lemmas#PER%20SECategory:Dutch adverbs#PER%20SECategory:Dutch multiword terms#PER%20SECategory:Dutch entries with incorrect language header#PER%20SECategory:Pages with entries#PER%20SECategory:Pages with 7 entries#PER%20SE

1. necessarily, absolutely, without fail
2. (rareCategory:Dutch terms with rare senses#PER%20SE) per se

Anagrams

• prees
• speer

Etymology

First attested in the 11th century. By surface analysis, per (“by, through”) +‎ sē (“itself, himself, herself, themselves”)Category:Latin compound terms#PER%20SE.

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈpɛr ˈseː]Category:Latin terms with IPA pronunciation#PER%20SE
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈpɛr ˈsɛː]Category:Latin terms with IPA pronunciation#PER%20SE

Adverb

per sē (not comparable)Category:Latin lemmas#PER%20SECategory:Latin adverbs#PER%20SECategory:Latin uncomparable adverbs#PER%20SECategory:Latin multiword terms#PER%20SECategory:Latin entries with incorrect language header#PER%20SECategory:Pages with entries#PER%20SECategory:Pages with 7 entries#PER%20SE

1. (Medieval LatinCategory:Medieval Latin#PER%20SE) by itself; separately; alone

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from LatinCategory:Polish terms borrowed from Latin#PER%20SECategory:Polish unadapted borrowings from Latin#PER%20SECategory:Polish terms derived from Latin#PER%20SE per sē.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈpɛr ˈsɛ/Category:Polish terms with IPA pronunciation#PER%20SE
• Syllabification: per se

Preposition

per seCategory:Polish lemmas#PER%20SECategory:Polish prepositions#PER%20SECategory:Polish multiword terms#PER%20SECategory:Polish entries with incorrect language header#PER%20SECategory:Pages with entries#PER%20SECategory:Pages with 7 entries#PER%20SE

1. (literaryCategory:Polish literary terms#PER%20SE) per se (by itself)

Further reading

• “per se”, in Wielki słownik języka polskiego‎ (in Polish), Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
• “per se”, in Polish dictionaries at PWN‎ (in Polish)

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from LatinCategory:Portuguese terms borrowed from Latin#PER%20SECategory:Portuguese unadapted borrowings from Latin#PER%20SECategory:Portuguese terms derived from Latin#PER%20SE per sē.

Pronunciation

Adverb

pér sé (not comparable)Category:Portuguese lemmas#PER%20SECategory:Portuguese adverbs#PER%20SECategory:Portuguese uncomparable adverbs#PER%20SECategory:Portuguese multiword terms#PER%20SECategory:Portuguese entries with incorrect language header#PER%20SECategory:Pages with entries#PER%20SECategory:Pages with 7 entries#PER%20SE

1. per se (without considering extraneous factors)

Further reading

• “per se”, in Dicionário Aulete Digital (in Portuguese), Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon Editora Digital, 2008–2026
• “per se”, in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), Lisbon: Priberam, 2008–2026

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from LatinCategory:Spanish terms borrowed from Latin#PER%20SECategory:Spanish unadapted borrowings from Latin#PER%20SECategory:Spanish terms derived from Latin#PER%20SE per sē.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˌpeɾ ˈse/ [ˌpeɾ ˈse]Category:Spanish terms with IPA pronunciation#PER%20SE

• Audio (El Salvador):

  (file)

  Category:Spanish terms with audio pronunciation#PER%20SE
• Syllabification: per se

Adverb

per seCategory:Spanish lemmas#PER%20SECategory:Spanish adverbs#PER%20SECategory:Spanish multiword terms#PER%20SECategory:Spanish entries with incorrect language header#PER%20SECategory:Pages with entries#PER%20SECategory:Pages with 7 entries#PER%20SE

1. per se

Further reading

• “per se”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025
• Seco, Manuel; Andrés, Olimpia; Ramos, Gabino (2023), “per se”, in Diccionario del español actual (in Spanish), third digital edition, Fundación BBVA