![]() ![]() ![]() You should use vice versa when you want to express that something you just said or wrote is true even in the opposite order. It is commonly used with the conjunctions “and” and “or.” You can also use it with “not” when you want to say “not the other way around.” Vice versa is an adverbial phrase, which means that it plays the role of an adverb. It comes from the Latin word vicis, which means “a change,” “an alteration,” or “a succession,” but also “a place” or “a position.” Versa comes from versus, which means “to turn.” When you combine the two words, you get a phrase that literally means “with position turned,” or, as we like to say in English, “the other way around.” Vice Versa Usage The vice in vice versa is not the same vice that means moral fault, but it is the vice we use in phrases like vice-president. Et cetera is a Latin phrase that is used to say “and so on.” Ad hoc is another such phrase, and it literally means “for this.” Vice versa is also among them, and it’s the phrase we’ll be examining closer in this article. He refuses to believe anything they say and vice versa. Fewer examples If they go away, we have their children and vice versa. The older examples in English, having been taken immediately from French, also present the prefix in the reduced forms vis- (vys, viz-) and vi- (vy-), subsequently replaced by vice- (also in early use vize-) except in viscount n." As far as I know, the prefix vice-, as in vice-chairman, is always pronounced as a monosyllable in English.Sometimes, the phrases that wander into English hang on to their original form. uk / vas v.s / us / va.s v.s / Add to word list C1 used to say that what you have just said is also true in the opposite order: He doesn't trust her, and vice versa ( she also doesn't trust him). onwards a number of these appear in Old French, at first usually with the prefix in the form of vis-, vi-, but latterly assimilated as a rule to the Latin original. ![]() The OED entry on this prefix says "From the 13th cent. This kind of spelling pronunciation (treating "e" at the end of a word as "silent e") exists for a number of other words or terms from Latin, such as rationale, bona fide(s) and Clostridium difficile.Īside from spelling pronunciation, another factor that might have contributed to the use of a monosyllabic pronunciation of vice in vice versa might be influence from the French pronunciation of a prefix derived from Latin vice. Vice versa also has what seems to be a "spelling pronunciation" where vice is pronounced as a single syllable /vaɪs/. Vice also has a monosyllabic pronunciation My guess would be that the phrase was treated as a single word, and so the vowel was reduced more than a word-final vowel would be: for comparison, the word-internal "i" in the word happily is often pronounced as /ə/, even though in most accents it is not usual to pronounce happy with /ə/. For example, the e at the end of the word simile, which comes from a Latin adjective, is pronounced this way.įor some reason, vice versa developed a variant pronunciation with /ə/. Vice versa originates as Latin, with the literal translation being the other way round or the position being reversed, but is now fully absorbed into. In an old-fashioned "RP" British English accent, this sound is identified as /ɪ/ (the "ih" sound of "kit") in other accents, it is identified as /i/ (an unstressed version of the "ee" sound of "fleece"). ![]() In the "traditional" English pronunciation of Latin, final e's in words like this were pronounced with the vowel found at the end of lily or happy. Latin doesn't have silent e, and the phrase vice versa comes directly from Latin. Vice can have a disyllabic pronunciation because of its Latin originsĪs vectory said, the pronunciation with four syllables didn't originate as "vice-a-versa", but as "vi-ce versa", with a non-silent e at the end of vice. ![]()
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