unpurposed
English
Etymology
Adjective
unpurposed (comparative more unpurposed, superlative most unpurposed)
- Without purpose.
- Synonyms: aimless, goalless, purposeless
- 1645, John Milton, Tetrachordon, London, p. 32,[1]
- 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, New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., Part I, Chapter 5, §3, p. 60,[2]
- 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 […]
- Not deliberate.
- Synonyms: inadvertent, undesigned, unintended, unintentional
- c. 1606, William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV, Scene 14,[3]
- 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,[4]
- […] 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,[5]
- 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,[6]
- 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 […]