1 [C] the intention, aim or function of sth; the thing that sth is supposed to achieve:
Our campaign's main purpose is to raise money. * The purpose of the book is to provide a complete guide to the university. * A meeting was called for the purpose of appointing a new treasurer. * The experiments serve no useful purpose (= are not useful). * The building is used for religious purposes. -< CAUSE
2 (purposes) [pl.] what is needed in a particular situation:
These gifts count as income for tax purposes. * For the purposes of this study, the three groups have been combined.
3 [C,U] meaning that is important and valuable to you:
Volunteer work gives her life (a sense of) purpose.
4 [U] the ability to plan sth and work successfully to achieve it
SYNDETERMINATION:
He has enormous confidence and strength of purpose.
seealsoCROSSPURPOSES
IDIOMS
on purpose not by accident; deliberately:
He did it on purpose, knowing it would annoy her.
to little / no purpose (formal) with little/no useful effect or result:
The government had spent a lot on education but to little or no purpose.
moreatINTENTn., PRACTICALadj.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for purpose is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is purpose a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, purpose is tagged as noun.
Does purpose appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — purpose appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
