Eni's good-natured rant of the month

[enismirdal]

Subject:
per se

per se
By or in itself (himself, herself, themselves); intrinsically, essentially; without reference to anything (or any one) else.



It is teh Latin-magic, not an originally English word. It is NOT spelled "persay" or "per say", and most definitely not "pursay". Every time I see the "word" persay, I cringe most horribly. Please, please, please, it's per se.

Thank you, world. *steps down from soapbox*

ETA: This is a general point I've been meaning to make for months now, and I only made it today because I happened to be in the mood.

Comments

[francita.livejournal.com]

Ahahahaha, thank you for that -- from a fellow cringer. :)

[larienelengasse.livejournal.com]

Oops... I think I did that, but not on purpose. Sometimes my fingers are faster than my brain... thanks for the reminder.

[enismirdal.livejournal.com]

*hugs* Sorry if you took this personally. I certainly hadn't noticed you doing this, if you did at all - the people I had in mind at the time were actually several folks on customers_suck and mock_the_stupid! You really were the last person I was thinking of when I posted the above mini rant hun, honestly. Sorry if you got upset.

[larienelengasse.livejournal.com]

I did, at first, then thought better of it. I was just too plain lazy to look it up - and since Latin isn't my first language *wink* (some might argue that English isn't either...) I spelled it incorrectly. No problem - I think I'll live. *grin*

[wednesdayschild.livejournal.com]

Ah, talking about it reminds me of the joys of one of my Classics supervisors who, horrified that I knew no Greek, asked me if I knew what per se meant; I was horrified that he had to ask.

[dreamfracture.livejournal.com]

"percy"

[emperor]

Are you saying that persay is evil per se, or merely that it displays gross ignorance? :-)

[enismirdal.livejournal.com]

*giggles*

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

*sigh* There's just *so many* of these. I may not know latin, but how can you not have seen this written down?

Other examples:

eg/ie: they're almost OPPOSITES. They're TWO LETTERS LONG. I would have thought everyone would know 'id est' -- that's nearly the same in lots of languages -- but it doesn't matter: just learn the abbreviations. Capiche?

mano a mano: hand to hand. OK, this is confusing, but there you go.

pre-madonna: NOOOOOO!

after death: yeah, they really spoke english back then...

[senji.livejournal.com]

Percy Percy Percy!

(The Green Engine)