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Aug 16, 2012
This week's theme
Latin terms in English

This week's words
corpus delicti
ex officio
ne plus ultra
ex post facto
cui bono

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

ex post facto

PRONUNCIATION:
(EKS post FAK-toh)

MEANING:
adjective, adverb: After the fact; retroactively.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin ex postfacto (after the fact). Earliest documented use: 1632.

USAGE:
"One of the ex post facto justifications for the Iraq war: that the invasion was necessary on humanitarian grounds."
Fighting for Survival; The Economist (London, UK); Nov 18, 2004.

See more usage examples of ex post facto in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
We are far more concerned about the desecration of the flag than we are about the desecration of our land. -Wendell Berry, farmer and author (b. 1934)

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