adjective
-
relating to, having, or indicating conscious intention
-
serving a purpose; useful
Other Word Forms
- nonpurposive adjective
- nonpurposively adverb
- nonpurposiveness noun
- prepurposive adjective
- purposively adverb
- purposiveness noun
- semipurposive adjective
- semipurposively adverb
- semipurposiveness noun
- unpurposive adjective
Etymology
Origin of purposive
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Young boys turn cartwheels, women in vivid head-to-toe veils walk purposively past, and donkey carts ferrying water drums trot along dusty dirt roads.
From BBC
With her caring but purposively unmoored essays, she has done just this.
From Washington Post
For them, as we saw in Chapter 9, the argument from design depended on envisaging the universe as manufactured, rather than on showing nature itself to be purposive.
From Literature
Circulating through this purposive material stockpile is the only way to experience an art built entirely on double takes.
From New York Times
“Start from there, with TV documentaries or YouTube. Then talk to them some more. The late educationalist Professor Roland Meighan called it ‘purposive conversation’.
From The Guardian
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
