Friday 13 February 2009

Qua? Qui? Que?

Just discovered the word qua in an academic article on how consumers are manufactured. Fascinating stuff about panopticons and dataveillance apart, I was intrigued by the author's use of the word qua which I had never before encountered. Turns out it's a handy little bugger. It's Latin for "as / as being in / in the capacity of" and is the feminine singular of "qui", which means "who".

So, dictionary.com gives us the example of "The work of art qua art can be judged by aesthetic criteria only."

The editor qua editor shortened by poem!

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