general-purpose

American  

[jen-er-uhl-pur-puhs] / ˈdʒɛn ər əlˈpɜr pəs /

adjective

1. useful in many ways; not limited in use or function.

   a good general-purpose dictionary.

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general-purpose British  

adjective

1. having a range of uses or applications; not restricted to one function

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Etymology

Origin of general-purpose

First recorded in 1890–95

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

general-purpose

Anthropic stored Elvis’ songs “into a permanent, general-purpose central library intended to be retained indefinitely, from which subsets were selected and copied again to train the next generation of Claude models,” the lawsuit contends.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 25, 2026

Tau is developing a general-purpose AI model for robots, which it runs on customized third-party hardware.

From MarketWatch ● Oct. 16, 2026

Many of these applications are less energy-hungry than general-purpose language models such as OpenAI's ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude, according to experts.

From Barron's ● Oct. 15, 2026

Exports of Canadian consumer goods also were up strongly, as were shipments of industrial machinery, equipment and parts thanks partly to a rise in general-purpose machinery sent to the U.S.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 6, 2026

They are far less popular in America, even as meat-producers, than the general-purpose breeds.

From Agriculture for Beginners Revised Edition by Charles William Burkett

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