intention

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The action or fact of intending.
• noun An aim that guides action; an objective.
• noun Purpose with respect to marriage.
• noun Medicine The process by which or the manner in which a wound heals.
• noun Archaic Import; meaning.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun In Roman Catholic theology, in reference to the administration of the sacraments, the actual will, on the part of the one administrating, to perform seriously the rites prescribed by the church, and to do nothing to show contrary intention.
• noun Direction of the mind; attention; hence, uncommon exertion of the intellectual faculties; closeness of application; fixedness of attention; earnestness.
• noun The act of intending or purposing.
• noun That which is intended, purposed, or meant; that for which a thing is made, designed, or done; intent; purpose; aim; meaning; desire: often in the plural, especially (in colloquial use) with regard to marriage.
• noun A straining or putting forth of action; exertion; intension.
• noun In surgery, and figuratively in other uses, natural effort or exertion; course of operation; process: as, the wound healed by first or by second intention. See below.
• noun A mental effort or exertion; notion; conception; opinion.
• noun Understanding; attention; consideration.
• noun In law, intent; the fixing of the mind upon the act and thinking of it as of one which will be performed when the time comes. Stephen; Harris. It depends on a joint exercise of the will and the understanding.
• noun In scholastic logic, a general concept of the mind.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun A stretching or bending of the mind toward an object; closeness of application; fixedness of attention; earnestness.
• noun A determination to act in a certain way or to do a certain thing; purpose; design.
• noun The object toward which the thoughts are directed; end; aim.
• noun obsolete The state of being strained. See Intension.
• noun (Logic) Any mental apprehension of an object.
• noun (Logic) a conception of a thing formed by the first or direct application of the mind to the individual object; an idea or image; as, man, stone.
• noun (Logic) a conception generalized from first intuition or apprehension already formed by the mind; an abstract notion; especially, a classified notion, as species, genus, whiteness.
• noun (Surg.) to cicatrize, as a wound, without suppuration.
• noun (Surg.) to unite after suppuration.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A course of action that a person intends to follow.
• noun The goal or purpose behind a specific action or set of actions
• noun obsolete Tension; straining, stretching.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun an act of intending; a volition that you intend to carry out
• noun (usually plural) the goal with respect to a marriage proposal
• noun an anticipated outcome that is intended or that guides your planned actions