Perforce

adverb

  • Occurring compulsorily, or happening necessarily, usually due to constraining circumstances

Usage

Since this is the Usage section in an entry about perforce, the section must perforce discuss different ways perforce can be used in speech. It follows inevitably from what this section is supposed to contain that it will address the word perforce and its usages. In other words, the section is constrained to talk about perforce by the nature of its intended purpose. This idea of an action being constrained to happen through force of circumstance is how the word perforce is used today. Originally, however, perforce described something which was made to happen through literal, physical force. Thus, if a 12th century English knight were to demand potatoes from a peasant at lance point, that unscrupulous knight would have perforce seized the poor peasant's produce.

Not many of us are forced to do things at lance point these days, but all of us are probably forced to do things through circumstances, seeming or actual. For example, if you were trying to bake some cookies and were all out of milk and sugar, then you would perforce go shopping. This would mean that, because you are planning to bake cookies and you can only acquire the necessary ingredients by shopping, your predicament in conjunction with your plan require you to go shopping. Functionally, you must go shopping. Similarly, you could describe a dying fire by saying, "Having burned all of its fuel, the fire began perforce to dwindle away." Given the conditions of the fire, it follows inevitably that the fire will begin to die. In this way, whether you are describing the necessity of a person's actions or the inevitability of something else happening, perforce may be just the word for you.

Example: Having run out of gas in our vehicle, we perforce walked the remaining distance to the gas station.

Example: If you touch fire you will perforce be burned.

Origin

Perforce was first used in English in the 14th century to describe something constrained through physical coercion. The word originally entered English as par force, a phrase lifted directly from the French which means literally "by force." The French phrase was formed from the French cognate par which derives from the Latin per, and from the Old French force which was formed from the Late Latin fortia, a noun usage of the Latin fortis, meaning “strong, steadfast, or brave.” In English, the original Latin per replaced the French par by the 17th century, and by the late 16th century the word had gained its contemporary figurative usage.

In Literature

From Herman Melville's Billy Budd:

The face he beheld, for the moment one expressive of the agony of the strong, was to that officer, though a man of fifty, a startling revelation. That the condemned one suffered less than he who mainly had effected the condemnation was apparently indicated by the former's exclamation in the scene soon perforce to be touched upon.

Here, Melville uses perforce to describe the necessity of discussing the next scene in the book, thus speaking to both the constraints of the narrative which must relate the scene and to the way that the scene alluded to follows inevitably from the dreadful sentence passed by the captain on Billy Budd.

Mnemonic

  • If something is made to happen by force of a situation,
    Then it happens perforce with no chance of alleviation.

Tags

Force, Freedom, Causality

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