purport

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English

WOTD – 10 July 2009

Etymology

From Middle English purporten, from Anglo-Norman purporter and Old French porporter (“convey, contain, carry”), from pur-, from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Latin pro (“forth”) + (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Old French porter (“carry”), from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Latin portō (“carry”).

Pronunciation

  • Lua error in Module:parameters at line 95: Parameter 1 should be a valid language or etymology language code; the value "verb" is not valid. See WT:LOL and WT:LOL/E. IPA(key): /pəˈpɔːt/
  • Lua error in Module:parameters at line 95: Parameter 1 should be a valid language or etymology language code; the value "verb" is not valid. See WT:LOL and WT:LOL/E. IPA(key): /pɚˈpɔɹt/
  • Lua error in Module:parameters at line 95: Parameter 1 should be a valid language or etymology language code; the value "noun" is not valid. See WT:LOL and WT:LOL/E. IPA(key): /ˈpɜːpɔːt/, /ˈpɜːpət/
  • Lua error in Module:parameters at line 95: Parameter 1 should be a valid language or etymology language code; the value "noun" is not valid. See WT:LOL and WT:LOL/E. IPA(key): /ˈpɚpɔɹt/
  • Audio (AU):(file)
  • Rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)t

Verb

purport (third-person singular simple present purports, present participle purporting, simple past and past participle purported)

  1. To convey, imply, or profess outwardly (often falsely).
    He purports himself to be an international man of affairs.
  2. (construed with to) To intend.
    He purported to become an international man of affairs.

Translations

Template:ttbc-top

Noun

purport (plural purports)

  1. import, intention or purpose
    • 1748, David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
      My practice, you say, refutes my doubts. But you mistake the purport of my question.
    • 1843, Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, book 4, chapter I, Aristocracies
      Sorrowful, phantasmal as this same Double Aristocracy of Teachers and Governors now looks, it is worth all men’s while to know that the purport of it is, and remains, noble and most real.
    • 1939, Ernest Vincent Wright, Gadsby
      A child’s brain starts functioning at birth; and has, amongst its many infant convolutions, thousands of dormant atoms, into which God has put a mystic possibility for noticing an adult’s act, and figuring out its purport.
  2. (obsolete) disguise; covering
    • Spenser
      For she her sex under that strange purport / Did use to hide.

Translations

Anagrams

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