intention
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ɪnˈtɛnʃən/
rhymes: -ɛnʃən
homophone: intension
Forms: form: intentions
form: entention
Etymology: From Middle English entencioun, intention, from Old French entencion, from Latin intentiō, intentiōnem. Compare intent. Equivalent to intent + -ion.
Senses: examples: text: My intention was to marry a wealthy widow.
text: It’s easy to promise anything when you have no intention of fulfilling any of it.
text: a. 1784, attributed to Samuel Johnson
Hell is paved with good intentions.
text: “My Continental prominence is improving,” I commented dryly. ¶ Von Lindowe cut at a furze bush with his silver-mounted rattan. ¶ “Quite so,” he said as dryly, his hand at his mustache. “I may say if your intentions were known your life would not be worth a curse.”
ref: 1908, W[illiam] B[lair] M[orton] Ferguson, chapter IV, in Zollenstein, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:
text: It had been his intention to go to Wimbledon, but as he himself said: “Why be blooming well frizzled when you can hear all the results over the wireless. And results are all that concern me.[…]”
ref: 1935, George Goodchild, chapter 3, in Death on the Centre Court:
text: Zevala was ablaze, and all the insurgents — as they called themselves — were scurrying about like chickens with their heads cut off. There was talk of an attack. A second invading force. Perhaps the Foundation. Perhaps something worse.
ref: 2023 October 12, HarryBlank, “Fire in the Hole”, in SCP Foundation, archived from the original on 22 May 2024:
glosses: A course of action that a person intends to follow.
examples: text: The intention of this legislation is to boost the economy.
text: Though most of the cases here cover European encounters with non-Europeans, it is not the intention of the book to give the impression that genocide is a function of European colonialism and imperialism alone.
ref: 2008 June 1, A. Dirk Moses, “Preface”, in Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History, Berghahn Books, →ISBN, page x:
glosses: The goal or purpose.
examples: text: cold in those inner parts, cold belly, and hot liver, causeth crudity, and intention proceeds from perturbations […].
ref: , I.iii.3
glosses: Tension; straining, stretching.
examples: text: it is attention: when the mind with great earnestness, and of choice, fixes its view on any idea, considers it on all sides, and will not be called off by the ordinary solicitation of other ideas, it is that we call intention or study
ref: 1689 (indicated as 1690), [John Locke], chapter 2, in An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. […], London: […] Eliz[abeth] Holt, for Thomas Basset, […], →OCLC, book I, page 19:
glosses: A stretching or bending of the mind toward an object or a purpose (an intent); closeness of application; fixedness of attention; earnestness.
examples: text: In a Word, the most part of chronical Distempers proceed from Laxity of Fibres; in which Case the principal Intention is to restore the Tone of the solid Parts; […].
ref: 1732, John Arbuthnot, An Essay Concerning the Nature of Ailments …, Prop. II, p.159
glosses: The object toward which the thoughts are directed; end; aim.
glosses: Any mental apprehension of an object.
examples: text: When healing occurs by primary intention, the wound is basically closed with all areas of the wound connecting and healing simultaneously.
ref: 2007, Carie Ann Braun, Cindy Miller Anderson, Pathophysiology: Functional Alterations in Human Health, page 49:
topics: medicine
sciences
glosses: The process of the healing of a wound.
Synonyms: word: aim
word: intent
word: intention
word: mind
word: plan
Derived terms: counter-intention
intentional
intentionless
misintention
nonintention
paradoxical intention
secondary intention
subintention
the road to hell is paved with good intentions
well-intentioned
Related terms: word: intend
word: intent
word: well-intended
word: goal
word: purpose
word: desire