Word.ws English Dictionary

per say

per say is the misspelling of per se.

Meaning of per se

Adverb

per se (not comparable)

  1. Without determination by or involvement of extraneous factors; by its very nature.
    • Near-synonyms: by definition, by nature, essentially, in essence, ipso facto, intrinsically; see also Thesaurus:intrinsically
  2. (nonstandard, more loosely) In a true or literal sense; as one would expect from the name or description.
    • It's not a museum per se, but they do have some interesting artefacts.
  3. As the principle of its own determination and positing itself.
    • Everything not applying per se in one of these two senses is called an accident.1988, J. van Rijen, Aspects of Aristotle’s Logic of Modalities, page 137
  4. Not leaving discretion to the judge to take into account additional factors that could rebut the judgment, deriving the qualification from the statute.
    • The law makes drunk driving illegal per se.

See all 6 meanings of per se

Questions about per say

What is per say the misspelling of?
Per say is the misspelling of per se.

Words near per say in the dictionary

  1. per pro
  2. per procurationem
  3. per rectal
  4. per rectum
  5. per saltum
  6. per say
  7. per se
  8. per stirpes
  9. per usual
  10. per vagina
  11. per vaginam

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: per say (page history and authors); per se (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “per say.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/per_say. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.