Etymology

a priori

Today it means: Self-evident, intuitively obvious. Full definition →

Medieval Latin ā priōrī
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The story

  1. Medieval Latin · learned borrowing fromā priōrī“involving reasoning from cause to effect; from first principles”
  2. English todaya priori

First attested in 1610. Learned borrowing from Medieval Latin ā priōrī (“involving reasoning from cause to effect; from first principles”, literally “from the former”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.