According to specialists whose responsibilities include monitoring the penetration of foreign words into the Russian language and maintaining its purity, the use of foreign words has recently intensified significantly. Indeed, it is obvious even to a person ignorant of these issues that the speech of our people more and more begins to resemble English, and the older generation sometimes completely ceases to understand Russian speech saturated with Americanisms.
We will judge the positive or negative impact of the borrowed words on the Russian language by specialists involved in protecting the purity of the Russian language, while we will try to figure out where the word “a priori” entered our vocabulary. And how not to be mistaken, applying it daily in native speech.
According to the academic dictionary, this is a philosophical term originating from the Latin word “a priori”, which literally means “from the previous” (knowledge acquired by consciousness without any experience). Without going into complicated philosophical terminology, let us try to understand what “a priori” means in the language of modern people.
How and when is the term appropriate to apply? To date, there are no specific rules governing the appropriateness of using the word “a priori”. That means, it can be applied when the events or facts described by you do not require any evidence, as they are truths that do not need proof or are unprovable. So, one can often hear how, when proving something in conversations, people say that this is known to all a priori.
Therefore, you can use this word in any cases when it is important to emphasize the lack of evidence, facts or the possibility of preliminary clarification. For example: "In our area, every stranger is a priori considered a rogue and a villain." Or: “How can you do this - a priori write people down as scammers!”
Let's look at a few more examples to help you better understand what a priori means.
“People suddenly visited the Philharmonic who had never visited it before, who a priori thought that it was very boring to listen to Mozart, Vivaldi and Chopin.” (Before gaining experience, people believed that classical music was boring, that is, they accepted the truth regardless of experience, without it).
"You can not a priori consider a person a criminal." (Without evidence and without relying on facts, one person cannot call the other a criminal).
Knowing what “a priori” means, correctly using this word, the speaker always puts himself in a favorable light in the eyes of his interlocutors, emphasizing his excellent erudition and broad horizons. But do not forget that there are people who are very annoyed when others make speech errors associated with a misunderstanding of a word.
Therefore, a person who does not fully understand what “a priori” means, but uses this word everywhere, without a clue as to what meaning it should be used, risks not only being accused of illiteracy and being known as an uneducated person, but also incurring a fair anger of people who advocate the purity of the Russian language and the absence of obvious errors, both in colloquial and written language.