Meanings
qua1
- human sciencesas; in the capacity of; acting as
It was qua poet that Byron resurrected the exploded and discarded immortal Christian soul by bodying it forth through the notion of soul conceived as poetic imagination.
2003, Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason, Penguin, published 2004, page 4585 more examples
Qua work of art, the work of art cannot be interpreted; there is nothing to interpret; we can only criticize it according to standards, in comparison to other works of art; […]
1920, T. S. Eliot, “Hamlet and His Problems”, in The Sacred WoodAs anatomy, physiology and, later, psychology have developed into more or less well-organized sciences, they have necessarily and rightly come to incorporate the study of, among other things, the structures, mechanisms, and functionings of animal and human bodies qua percipient.
1954: Gilbert Ryle, Dilemmas: The Tarner Lectures, 1953, dilemma vii: Perception, page 99 (The Syndics of the Cambridge University Press)For sleep qua sleep has no experiential content: it cannot turn out, as remarked before, that a man was not asleep because he was not having some experience or other. I am denying that a dream qua dream is a seeming, appearance or ‘semblance of reality’.
1962: Norman Malcolm; Dreaming; chapter nine: “Judgments in Sleep”, page 39; chapter twelve: “The Concept of Dreaming”, page 68 (1977 paperback reprint; Routledge & Kegan Paul; ISBN 0‒7100‒3836‒4 (c), 0‒7100‒8434‒X (p))2005: Ulfelder, Jay.Collective Action and the Breakdown of Authoritarian Regimes. International Political Science Review, 26(3), p318. Retrieved 1615 240810 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/30039035.pdf?acceptTC=true. "In essence, military regimes are autocracies in which the military qua organization performs many of the functions performed by the ruling party in single-party regimes."
2009: Ken Levy, Killing, Letting Die, and the Case for Mildly Punishing Bad Samaritanism, Georgia Law Review, p. 24. Blame qua attitude is the feeling or belief that an individual has committed a wrongdoing, usually a wrongful action and/or harm, and can be reasonably expected not to have committed this wrongdoing. Blame qua practice is the public expression of this attitude – usually by means of censure (written or verbal criticism) or punishment. Generally, the morally worse the wrongdoing, the more severe the censure/punishment.
qua2
- The cawing sound of a crow.
Qua... qua... qua... out of the blue I hear the crows cawing with great fanfare as they announce to the world at large that they are here by my side and intend to probe into my being.
2012, Jaman Tree, I Crow River1 more example
Crows have a language of their own in a wild state that any observant person can learn. […] Then he would straighten his head back and, with the most comical bowing and wagging, say: "Qua qua qua, qua qua qua" for perhaps a minute.
1909, The Country Gentleman, volume 74, page 266
Origin
qua · preposition
- Latinquā“in the capacity of”
- Englishqua
From Latin quā (“in the capacity of”).
More words from Latin
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Czech jakožto, jako
- jakožtoin the capacity of
- jakoin the capacity of
Danish qua, i egenskab af
- quain the capacity of
- i egenskab afin the capacity of
Dutch qua, als zodanig
- quain the capacity of
- als zodanigin the capacity of
- wat betreftin the capacity of
Esperanto kiel
- kielin the capacity of
French en tant que
- en tant quein the capacity of
Greek ως
- ως (os)in the capacity of
Polish jako
- jakoin the capacity of
Swedish i egenskap av
- i egenskap avin the capacity of
Rhymes & wordplay
Rhymes with qua
All rhymes →Cite this entry
qua. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/qua
“qua.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/qua. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “qua,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/qua.
Source: qua on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.