raison d'etre

1. 1.

   reason for being

   Broaderrationalization
2. 2.

   the purpose that justifies a thing's existence

   Broaderfunction

Questions about raison d'etre

What does raison d'etre mean?

raison d'etre means "reason for being". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

Is raison d'etre a common word?

raison d'etre is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.