raison d'etre

A concert might sound like an odd raison d’etre for visiting a foreign country, especially when fans can watch the Eras Tour from home via the documentary now streaming on Disney+.

From Seattle Times ● May 7, 2024

How much mileage can there be in a literary magazine whose raison d’etre is just: Taco Bell?

From Slate ● Sep. 8, 2023

It’s a good question, and one that cuts to the core of the new policy’s raison d’etre.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 6, 2023

But some serving and recently retired RAF officers, who the BBC has spoken to, question whether he has lost sight of the raison d'etre of the RAF - to fight and win wars?

From BBC ● Aug. 24, 2022

Watch a monkey and you cannot enumerate the things he does, cannot discover the stimuli to which he reacts, cannot conceive the raison d'etre of his pursuits.

From The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) A Plain Story Simply Told by J. Arthur Thomson

But she’s also the kind of television personality who is comfortable before the camera without being in love with it, or giving the impression that media success is her raison d’être.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026

Couple the above with ExpressVPN’s pretty stringent privacy policy, you begin to understand that ExpressVPN is more of an “old school” VPN provider, for which security and privacy are a VPN’s raison d’être.

From Salon ● Mar. 13, 2026

That the “The Napa Boys” won’t be everyone’s cup of tea — or in this case, goblet of wine — almost feels like this meta comedy’s raison d’être.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 27, 2026

BeReal’s appeal ended the second the app started pushing users to friend randos and post more than once a day, defeating its entire raison d’être.

From Slate ● Dec. 14, 2025

His raison d’être in the club is the same as in the city; it is to provide luxuries or amusements for the society, which the society could not generally obtain for itself.

From Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius by Samuel Dill