Funny that "per say" led you to this, as it is also an incorrect (Americanized) spelling for this Latin expression, which actually means "by itself" and should be spelled "per se".
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/per_se

Ironically, English is not my first language, but I regularly find myself correcting English natives's writing. Now I know why I had to suffer learning Latin languages for endless hours...