Word of the Day

: September 28, 2017

pace

preposition PAY-see

What It Means

: contrary to the opinion of — usually used as an expression of deference to someone's contrary opinion

pace in Context

Pace the editorialist, there are in fact multiple solutions to these kinds of problems.

"The public museums, great and small, that are one of America's educational glories house collections expensively assembled by rich men and (pace Isabella Gardner and Baltimore's Cone sisters) women with lofty but not selfless motives." — John Updike, The New York Review of Books, 5 Oct. 2006

Did You Know?

Though used in English since the 19th century, the preposition pace has yet to shed its Latin mantle, and for that reason it's most at home in formal writing or in contexts in which one is playing at formality. The Latin word pace is a form of pax, meaning "peace" or "permission," and when used sincerely the word does indeed suggest a desire for both. This Latin borrowing is unrelated to the more common noun pace (as in "keeping pace") and its related verb ("pacing the room"); these also come from Latin, but from the word pandere, meaning "to spread."