unpurposed

---

Adjective

unpurposed

1. Without purpose.

   Synonyms: aimless, goalless, purposeless

   • 1645, John Milton, Tetrachordon, London, p. 32,

     If that Law did well to reduce from liberty to bondage for an ingratitude not the greatest, much more became it the Law of God to enact the restorement of a free born man from an unpurpos’d, and unworthy bondage to a rightfull liberty for the most unnatural fraud and ingratitude that can be committed against him.

   • 1917, Sinclair Lewis, The Job (novel), New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., Part I, Chapter 5, §3, p. 60,

     He was distinguished from his fellows by the fact that each year he grew more aware that he hadn’t even a dim candle of talent; that he was ill-planned and unpurposed; that he would have to settle down to the ordinary gray limbo of jobs and offices […]

   • 1957, Muriel Spark, The Comforters, London: Macmillan, Chapter 7,

     ‘Your questions about Mrs Jepp, I can’t possibly answer them, ‘said Mervyn, looking at his watch but unpurposed, settling into his chair […]

2. Not deliberate.

   Synonyms: inadvertent, undesigned, unintended, unintentional, Thesaurus:unintentional

   • c. 1606, William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV, Scene 14,

     When I did make thee free, sworest thou not then

     To do this when I bade thee? Do it at once;

     Or thy precedent services are all

     But accidents unpurposed.

   • 1640, William Whately, Prototypes, London: Edward Langham, The Thirteenth Example, pp. 199-200,

     […] the Lord will surely accept him and forgive his unpurposed offences and sinnes of meere weakenesse and frailty.

   • 1893, George Gissing, The Odd Women, London: Lawrence & Bullen, Volume I, Chapter 7, p. 188,

     It was written in very small characters—perhaps an unpurposed indication of the misgivings with which she allowed herself to pen the words.

   • 1948, Gilbert Murray (translator), Sophocles: Oedipus at Colonus, London: George Allen & Unwin, p. 33,

     O pitying strangers, since ye will not hear

     My old blind father, for some tales ye have heard

     Of his unpurposed sin, Oh, still give ear

     To a lost maiden, and accept the word

     I speak for his sake […]

---

This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.002