ipso facto

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin ipsō factō (“by the same fact”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌɪpsəʊ ˈfæktəʊ/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

Adverb

ipso facto (not comparable)

1. By that very fact itself; actually.

   Coordinate term: eo ipso

   • 1919, Henry B[lake] Fuller, “Cope at His House Party”, in Bertram Cope’s Year: A Novel, Chicago, Ill.: Ralph Fletcher Seymour, The Alderbrink Press, →OCLC, page 94:

     Cope was not long in feeling him as operating on the unconscious assumption—unconscious, and therefore all the more damnable—that the young man in business constituted, ipso facto, a kind of norm by which other young men in other fields of endeavor were to be gauged: […]

   • 1999 April, Bryan Caplan, “The Austrian Search for Realistic Foundations”, in Southern Economic Journal, volume 65, number 4, page 833:

     For [Ludwig von] Mises or [Murray] Rothbard, it is simply confused to posit latent preferences; if two individuals fail to make an exchange, then this ipso facto demonstrates that at that moment at least one of them would not have benefited from the exchange.

Related terms

• per se

Translations

By that fact

• Bulgarian: са́мо по се́бе си (sámo po sébe si)
• Czech: samo o sobě
• Finnish: itsessään
• French: ipso facto (fr)
• German: ipso facto (de)
• Italian: ipso facto
• Latin: ipso facto
• Spanish: ipso facto (es)
• Swedish: ipso facto, genom sakens natur
• Ukrainian: по фа́кту (po fáktu), наспра́вді (nasprávdi)

Adjective

ipso facto (not comparable)

1. Being such by itself, or by its own definition; inherent.
   • 1984 April 14, Richard Knisely, “Quintessential Narcissism”, in Gay Community News, page 13:

     Is not the reading of another's diary an ipso facto act of voyeurism?

Further reading

• The Oxford English Dictionary (2007)
• “ipso facto”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

French

Adverb

ipso facto

1. ipso facto

References

• “ipso facto”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Italian

Alternative forms

• issofatto (vernacular)

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from Latin ipsō factō.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /i.pso ˈfak.to/, /ˈi.pso ˈfak.to/
• Rhymes: -akto
• Hyphenation: i‧pso‧fàc‧to, ì‧pso‧fàc‧to

Adverb

ipso facto

1. immediately

   Synonyms: immediatamente, issofatto, subito

   lo cacciò ipso facto da casa sua ― he immediately kicked him out of his house

2. (chiefly law) by that very fact itself; automatically, ipso facto

   Synonym: automaticamente

Further reading

• ipso facto in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana

Spanish

Adverb

ipso facto

1. ipso facto

Further reading

• “ipso facto”, in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014