entention

English

Noun

entention (plural ententions)

1. Obsolete form of intention.
   • The Birth, Marriage, and Death Register, Church Records, Lancaster Massachusetts 1643 — 1850

     Jacob Fowle entered his Entention of marriage with Phebe Osgood Feb 4 1738

2. (neologism) Reference to something not necessarily present; as a book might discuss mathematics without presenting any mathematics in the text, or a tool might be manufactured for dealing with objects not present at the time of manufacture; DNA encodes information for dealing with processes that are not underway at its formation.
   • Terrence W. Deacon in Incomplete Nature 2012

     ...when referring to all such phenomena in general, I will use entention to characterize their internal relationship to a telos — an end, or otherwise displaced and thus non-present something, or possible something.

     ...at the very moment this lion popped into existence, before even one beat of its heart, at that instant these tendencies were present and the entention was present as well, if these processes are poised to begin and proceed in a way that preserves the whole lion.

Related terms

• ententional