Ipso Facto - Wiktionary

English

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Etymology

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

Pronunciation

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

• Audio (US):

  (file)

Adverb

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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.
   • 2011 April 8, James McWilliams, “An Inconvenient Truth: Free-Range Meat Isn't 'Natural'”, in The Atlantic‎[1]:We've imbued "natural food" with such virtuous connotations that meat supposedly raised according to the law of nature is, ipso facto, thought to be an ethically worthwhile choice.
   • 2023 October 10, HarryBlank, “The Cruelest Fight”, in SCP Foundation‎[2], archived from the original on 31 August 2024:Intellectually, Ibanez had understood that there would be a lot of caverns. She'd once read that the Great Lakes, the largest freshwater bodies in the world, had a surface area of something like a quarter of a million square kilometres. The Mishepeshu were said to have used their tunnels to travel between the lakes and their islands. Ipso facto, there would be a lot of interior space down here. She'd patrolled some of it before. She'd seen it mapped by drones like the ones Nascimbeni had used. She should have been prepared.

Translations

[edit] 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

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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?

See also

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• per se

Further reading

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• “ipso facto, adv.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.
• “ipso facto”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

French

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Adverb

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ipso facto

1. ipso facto

References

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

Italian

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Alternative forms

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• issofatto (vernacular)

Etymology

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Unadapted borrowing from Latin ipsō factō.

Pronunciation

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

Adverb

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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

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

Spanish

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Etymology

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

Pronunciation

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• IPA(key): /ˌibso ˈfaɡto/ [ˌiβ̞.so ˈfaɣ̞.t̪o]

• Audio (El Salvador):

  (file)

• Syllabification: ip‧so fac‧to

Adverb

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ipso facto

1. ipso facto

Usage notes

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According to Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) prescriptions, unadapted foreign words should be written in italics in a text printed in roman type, and vice versa, and in quotation marks in a manuscript text or when italics are not available. In practice, this RAE prescription is not always followed.

Related terms

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• isofacto

Further reading

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• “ipso facto”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025