bent on

Idioms  

1. Also, bent upon. Determined, resolved, as in Jamie is bent on winning the math prize. This phrase, first recorded in 1762, always uses the past participle of the verb bend in the sense of “tend toward.”

---

Example Sentences

Nostalgia, though, is a peril that the author, an art historian at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, is bent on warding off.

From The Wall Street Journal

There are no human characters in “Badlands,” only expendable mechanical representatives of a megacorporation bent on bringing the known universe to heel.

From Salon

But his analysis is undermined by his alarmist hyperbole and his tendency to cast nearly all of his political antagonists as authoritarian villains bent on thrusting America back to the days of Jim Crow.

From The Wall Street Journal

Others call the dictionary a fig leaf for the interpretive excesses of jurists bent on reading the law to suit a political agenda.

From Los Angeles Times

And when those people — like my parents — came here, they were immediately subjected to a racism hard-wired into the American psyche, which then justified a Latin American foreign policy bent on domination, not friendship.

From Los Angeles Times