Word.ws English Dictionary

statu quo

statu quo is the rare form of status quo.

Meaning of status quo

Noun

status quo (plural status quos or (rare) statuses quo or (rare, hypercorrect) stati quo)

  1. The state of things; the way things are, as opposed to the way they could be; the existing state of affairs.
    • “As a black woman,” Jemisin tells me, “I have no particular interest in maintaining the status quo. Why would I? The status quo is harmful, the status quo is significantly racist and sexist and a whole bunch of other things that I think need to change. With epic fantasy there is a tendency for it...2015 July 27, Noah Berlatsky, “NK Jemisin: the fantasy writer upending the 'racist and sexist status quo'”, in The Guardian

Forms of statu quo

pluralstatu quos

Origin of statu quo

From Latin statū quō (“(in) the state in which”), from statū, ablative singular of status (“state”), + quō (“in which”), ablative singular of quī (“which”). Likely taken from the earlier in statu quo used in English (see, e.g., the 1857 quotation).

Words formed from statu quo

Questions about statu quo

What is statu quo the rare form of?
Statu quo is the rare form of status quo.

Words near statu quo in the dictionary

  1. statto
  2. Statton
  3. Stattons
  4. stattos
  5. statty
  6. statu quo
  7. statu-quo-ite
  8. statu-quo-ites
  9. statua
  10. statuae
  11. statuaries

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: statu quo (page history and authors); status quo (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: “statu quo.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/statu_quo. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.