purposive

English

Etymology

From purpose +‎ -ive. Compare purpositive.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈpəːpəsɪv/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈpɚpəsɪv/

Adjective

purposive (comparative more purposive, superlative most purposive)

1. Serving a particular purpose; adapted to a given purpose, especially through natural evolution. [from 19th c.]
   • 1918, Algernon Blackwood, chapter 9, in The Garden of Survival‎^[1], London: Macmillan, page 142:

     Irresistably it came to me again that beauty, far from being wasted, was purposive, that this purpose was of a redeeming kind, and that some one who was pleased co-operated with it for my personal benefit.

   • 1980, George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, chapter 24, in Metaphors We Live By:

     As we saw in our discussion of the FAKE GUN example in chapter 19, there are natural dimensions to our categories for objects: […] purposive, based on the uses we can make of an object in a given situation.

2. Done or performed with a conscious purpose or intent. [from 19th c.]

   Synonyms: deliberate, intentional, purposeful; see also Thesaurus:intentional

   • 1949 June 8, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], “Appendix. The Principles of Newspeak.”, in Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC; republished [Australia]: Project Gutenberg of Australia, August 2001, page 273:

     It would have been quite impossible to use the A vocabulary for literary purposes or for political or philosophical discussion. It was intended only to express simple, purposive thoughts, usually involving concrete objects or physical actions.

   • 2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 191:

     Other ecclesiastics [...] were similarly accepting of a space for purposive and beneficent human action and betterment in a disenchanted world.

3. (psychology) Pertaining to purpose, as reflected in behaviour or mental activity. [from 19th c.]
   • 1920 November 9, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter 29, in Women in Love, New York, N.Y.: Privately printed [by Thomas Seltzer] for subscribers only, →OCLC, page 453:

     Ursula could not believe the air in her nostrils. It seemed conscious, malevolent, purposive in its intense murderous coldness.

   • 1964, C. S. Lewis, chapter 5, in The Discarded Image‎^[2], Cambridge University Press, page 93:

     The question at once arises whether medieval thinkers really believed that what we now call inanimate objects were sentient and purposive.

4. Pertaining to or demonstrating purpose. [from 19th c.]
   • 1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society, published 2012, page 78:

     The world was generally agreed to be a purposive one, responsive to the wishes of its Creator […].

5. Possessed of a firm purpose. [from 20th c.]

   Synonyms: determined, resolute

   • 1993, Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy‎^[3], Boston: Little, Brown, Part One, 1.15, p. 45:

     Whenever she opened a scientific book and saw whole paragraphs of incomprehensible words and symbols, she felt a sense of wonder at the great territories of learning that lay beyond her—the sum of so many noble and purposive attempts to make objective sense of the world.

6. (grammar) Of a clause or conjunction: expressing purpose. [from 20th c.]
   • 2004, Olga Fischer et al., chapter 7, in The Syntax of Early English, Cambridge University Press, page 212:

     Many scholars suggest that […] the increase in the use of the to-infinitive in Middle English took place at the expense of the bare infinitive (i.e. an infinitive without the marker to). […] due to the loss of verbal inflections, it became difficult to distinguish the infinitival form from other verbal forms. As a result […] to began to function as a mere marker of the infinitive, losing its original ‘purposive’ sense […]

Usage notes

• Objects: behavior, action, interpretation, sample, etc.

Derived terms

• purposive approach
• purposively
• purposiveness
• purposivism
• purposivist
• purposivity

Related terms

• purposeful

Translations

expressing purpose (grammar)

• Czech: účelový (cs) m
• Slovak: účelový m
• Spanish: intencional (es)

Noun

purposive (uncountable)

1. (grammar) A mood indicating a purpose of the course of activity expressed by the verb.
   • 2003, Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, “16 - Mood and modality”, in A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia‎^[4], Cambridge University Press, →DOI, →ISBN, page 393:

     This purposive was described by speakers as referring to the action which can be observed at the moment of speech; this is why it is termed ‘visual’.