Meanings
- not comparableBy that very fact itself; actually.
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.
2011 April 8, James McWilliams, “An Inconvenient Truth: Free-Range Meat Isn't 'Natural'”, in The Atlantic3 more examples
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: […]
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 94For [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.
1999 April, Bryan Caplan, “The Austrian Search for Realistic Foundations”, in Southern Economic Journal, volume 65, number 4, page 833Intellectually, 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.
2023 October 10, HarryBlank, “The Cruelest Fight”, in SCP Foundation, archived from the original on 31 Aug 2024
- not comparableBeing such by itself, or by its own definition; inherent.
Is not the reading of another's diary an ipso facto act of voyeurism?
1984 April 14, Richard Knisely, “Quintessential Narcissism”, in Gay Community News, page 13
Synonyms & antonyms
Origin
- Latinipsō factō“by the fact itself”
- Englishipso facto
Borrowed from Latin ipsō factō (“by the fact itself”).
More words from Latin
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Bulgarian са́мо по се́бе си
- са́мо по се́бе си (sámo po sébe si)by that fact
Czech samo o sobě
- samo o soběby that fact
Finnish itsessään
- itsessäänby that fact
French ipso facto
- ipso factoby that fact
German ipso facto
- ipso factoby that fact
Italian ipso facto
- ipso factoby that fact
Latin ipso facto
- ipso factoby that fact
Polish ipso facto
- ipso factoby that fact
Spanish ipso facto
- ipso factoby that fact
Swedish ipso facto, genom sakens natur
- ipso factoby that fact
- genom sakens naturby that fact
Ukrainian по фа́кту, наспра́вді
- по фа́кту (po fáktu)by that fact
- наспра́вді (nasprávdi)by that fact
Cite this entry
ipso facto. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ipso%20facto
“ipso facto.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ipso%20facto. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “ipso facto,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ipso%20facto.
Source: ipso facto on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.