Word.ws English Dictionary

ex post facto

ex post facto adjective: retroactive.

Adjective

ex post facto (not comparable)

  1. Retroactive.
    • One of them added that it was hard lines that there wasn’t any gentleman “such-like as yourself, squire,” to show some sort of appreciation of their efforts in a liquid form; […] The opportunities of acquiring an abnormal thirst had been here limited; a noble use of them had, however, been made...1897, Bram Stoker, Dracula
    1. Formulated or enacted after some event, and then retroactively applied to it.
      • Coupled with the Constitution's proscription of ex post facto laws is a similar prohibition against bills of attainder.1998, Daniel E. Troy, Retroactive Legislation, page 56
      • That the tax would take effect after some of the payments were made also raises issues. Says former Attorney General Richard Thornburg, also in an e-mail: "Such legislation could well run afoul of constitutional restrictions on bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, laws impairing the obligations...2009 March 21, Jim McTague, “Would a Tax on Bonuses Be Constitutional?”, in Barron's

Adverb

ex post facto (not comparable)

  1. By retroactive application of a law formulated or enacted after the deed in question.
    • What he did was not a crime when he did it, but he was convicted ex post facto.

ex post facto meaning in Malayalam

ex post facto in Malayalam

മുൻകാലപ്രാബല്യത്തോടെ

Forms of ex post facto

alternative formexpost facto
alternative formexpostfacto

Origin of ex post facto

From Latin ex (“from”) + post (“after”) + factō, ablative of factum (“deed”). In Latin, ex takes the ablative case, while post takes the accusative case. (See Wikipedia for a discussion of the grammatical form and usage of this phrase.)

Questions about ex post facto

What does ex post facto mean?
Ex post facto means retroactive.
What is ex post facto in Malayalam?
Ex post facto in Malayalam is മുൻകാലപ്രാബല്യത്തോടെ. See Ex post facto meaning in Malayalam.
What part of speech is ex post facto?
Ex post facto can be an adjective or an adverb.

Words near ex post facto in the dictionary

  1. ex officio
  2. ex opere operato
  3. ex parte
  4. ex pede Herculem
  5. ex post
  6. ex post facto
  7. ex professo
  8. ex proprio motu
  9. ex proprio vigore
  10. ex ray
  11. ex rays

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ex post facto (page history and authors); ex post facto (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “ex post facto.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ex_post_facto. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.