Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Not intended; not designed.

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

  • adjective Without purpose; purposeless

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • I've seen several teachers who say that they practice "democracy" but that is an excuse for uncontrolled, unpurposed chaos.

    Tom Hoffman about Essential Schools 10 common Principles 2008

  • 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 -- as soon as he could get control of his chaotic desires.

    The Job An American Novel Sinclair Lewis 1918

  • We may doubt, in spite of one or two charming and graceful passages, whether Rousseau was of a nature to have any feeling for the pathos of infancy, the bright blank eye, the eager unpurposed straining of the hand, the many turns and changes in murmurings that yet can tell us nothing.

    Rousseau Morley, John 1905

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

    The Odd Women George Gissing 1880

  • They are like tones of music, commencing and ending with the unpurposed breath that makes them.

    The Destiny of the Soul A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life William Rounseville Alger 1863

  • The Office, soulful and understanding if a bit unaspiring and unpurposed.

    AltWeeklies.com Site Feed 2009

  • The only action of verification proposed here is, in fact, the decision to believe with an unqualified commitment that rejects all doubt, said decision being based on entirely arbitrary and personal dispositions: the extent to which we see pattern in the world; the extent to which we read pattern as purpose; the extent to which we deny the possibility of unpurposed pattern; the extent to which we allow firm convictions to become inflexible by disacknowledging contingency.

    Archive 2010-03-01 Hal Duncan 2010

  • The only action of verification proposed here is, in fact, the decision to believe with an unqualified commitment that rejects all doubt, said decision being based on entirely arbitrary and personal dispositions: the extent to which we see pattern in the world; the extent to which we read pattern as purpose; the extent to which we deny the possibility of unpurposed pattern; the extent to which we allow firm convictions to become inflexible by disacknowledging contingency.

    Towards a Lexicon of Folly: Factard Hal Duncan 2010

  • Or, to put it as some aspiring writers might: without embroiling us in superfluous polysemousness, it must be averred that the aesthetic propensities of a vainglorious tome toward prolixity or indeed even the pseudo-pragmatic co-optation — as by droit du seigneur — of an antiquitarian lexis, whilst purportedly an amendment to the erudition of said opuscule and arguably consanguinean (metaphorically speaking) and perhaps even existentially bound up with its literary apprizal, can all too facilely directionize in the azimuth of fustian grandiloquence or unmanacle unpurposed (or even dystelelogical) consequences on a pith and/or douceur de vivre level vis-à-vis even the most pansophic reader.

    Author! Author! » 2010 » August 2010

  • Or, to put it as some aspiring writers might: without embroiling us in superfluous polysemousness, it must be averred that the aesthetic propensities of a vainglorious tome toward prolixity or indeed even the pseudo-pragmatic co-optation — as by droit du seigneur — of an antiquitarian lexis, whilst purportedly an amendment to the erudition of said opuscule and arguably consanguinean (metaphorically speaking) and perhaps even existentially bound up with its literary apprizal, can all too facilely directionize in the azimuth of fustian grandiloquence or unmanacle unpurposed (or even dystelelogical) consequences on a pith and/or douceur de vivre level vis-à-vis even the most pansophic reader.

    Author! Author! » Blog Archive » Speaking of dialogue revision, part VI: and then there’s the fine art of doing it right, or, love, agent-style 2010

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