Thursday, December 17, 2009

caseus sto, per se


per se seems to be a phrase people never officially learn but pick up the general meaning by hearing it used. I dont think it is being used incorrectly, per se, but it is always good to understand the meaning behind the words.


because it is learned practically, per se tends to commonly be spelled as one word and also incorrectly (perse or persay).

per se is a latin phrase meaning "by itself." when i learned this i considered it and realized i accidentally use it that way, but when i encountered per se i was more likely to understand it as 'necessarily.' it turns out 'necesarily' usually works in place of per se. consider the following:

"im not afraid of spiders, <per se or necessarily>, but i dont like them crawling on me."

in either case it is understood that a spider alone (by itself) is not enough to cause concern for the speaker (though realistically the spider could leap at the speaker and it should be feared always)

No comments:

Post a Comment