purposing

purposing is the present participle and gerund of purpose.

Meaning of purpose

purpose (third-person singular simple present purposes, present participle purposing, simple past and past participle purposed)

(transitive) To have or set as one's purpose or aim; resolve to accomplish; intend; plan.
- 1485 – Thomas Malory. Le Morte Darthur, Book X, Chapter xxxvi, leaf 235v
  Soo was Alysander purposed to ryde to london by the coūceille of sire Tristram to syre Launcelot /
  "So was Alisander purposed to ride to London, by the counsel of Sir Tristram, to Sir Launcelot."
Synonyms:

aim, intend, mean, plan, set out
(intransitive) To have (an) intention, purpose, or design; to intend; to mean.
- Upon my ſoul, / You may beleeve him: nor did he ere purpoſe / To me but nobly;[…]1622 May 24 (licensing date; Gregorian calendar), John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, “The Prophetesse”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […]...
Synonyms:

intend
(intransitive, obsolete) To discourse.
- Whom ouertaking, ſhe in merry ſort
  Them gan to bord, and purpoſe diuerſly,[…]1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 366

purposing (plural purposings)

plural	purposings

What does purposing mean?: Purposing means the act of forming a purpose.
What is purposing the present participle and gerund of?: Purposing is the present participle and gerund of purpose.
What part of speech is purposing?: Purposing is a noun.
What is the plural of purposing?: The plural of purposing is purposings.

Adapted from Wiktionary: purposing (page history and authors); 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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

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