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The Dutch word sowieso is a loanword from German. However, it differs from the German source word in its distribution and scope of meaning. In this paper, we provide evidence for differences in usage and acceptability from a corpus study and a rating study. We argue that the source word and loanword differ in their basic meaning and use conditions, constituting a case of semantic-pragmatic microvariation. In German, sowieso picks up a contextually given or inferable proposition, denies its causal relevance for the case at hand and indicates the causal decisiveness of an alternative proposition. In contrast, sowieso in Dutch does not target or presuppose a proposition from the discourse context. We propose that its core meaning can be described in terms of strengthening.