Word.ws English Dictionary

infinitive of purpose

infinitive of purpose noun: the use of the "to" infinitive form of a verb in answer to the implied question "why?".

Noun

infinitive of purpose (plural infinitives of purpose)

  1. The use of the "to" infinitive form of a verb in answer to the implied question "why?".
    • "I bought a pen and some paper to write a note" is an example of an infinitive of purpose.

Forms of infinitive of purpose

pluralinfinitives of purpose

Questions about infinitive of purpose

What does infinitive of purpose mean?
Infinitive of purpose means the use of the "to" infinitive form of a verb in answer to the implied question "why?".
What part of speech is infinitive of purpose?
Infinitive of purpose is a noun.
What is the plural of infinitive of purpose?
The plural of infinitive of purpose is infinitives of purpose.

Words near infinitive of purpose in the dictionary

  1. infinitival
  2. infinitivally
  3. infinitive
  4. infinitive marker
  5. infinitive markers
  6. infinitive of purpose
  7. infinitively
  8. infinitives
  9. infinitives of purpose
  10. infinitization
  11. infinitizations

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: infinitive of purpose (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “infinitive of purpose.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/infinitive_of_purpose. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.