Word of the Day

: September 8, 2013

per contra

adverb per-KAHN-truh

What It Means

1 a : on the contrary

b : by way of contrast

2 : as an offset

per contra in Context

I don't think this is a good plan at all; per contra, I think it's likely to cause a serious problem.

"Part-time job-holding in other industries by successors to the farm business has actually worked as a detriment to sustaining the farm business because these farm people often lose their agrarian identity. Agritourism, per contra, enables producers and farm successors to find a new agrarian identity through the extension of the activity domain at the on-farm level." - From an article by Yasuo Ohe and Adriano Ciani in Tourism & Hospitality Management, December 2012

Did You Know?

Luca Pacioli knew a thing or two about keeping the records straight. He was a Franciscan friar and mathematician who lived during the Italian Renaissance (he was, in fact, a friend of Leonardo da Vinci), and he is called the "father of accounting" because he was the first to publish a detailed description of bookkeeping practices that are still used today. Among his other counsel, Pacioli advised merchants to keep an accurate ledger with debits entered on the left side and credits on the right. The word "per contra" calls to mind this time-honored practice of balancing items on one side of a ledger against those on the other. The term comes from Italian, and it translates literally as "by the opposite side (of the ledger)."