purpositive

Adjective

purposive (comparative more purposive, superlative most purposive)

1. Serving a particular purpose; useful; adapted to a given purpose, especially through natural evolution.
   • Irresistably it came to me again that beauty, far from being wasted, was purposive, that this purpose was of a redeeming kind, and that some one who was pleased co-operated with it for my personal benefit.1918, Algernon Blackwood, chapter 9, in The Garden of Survival, London: Macmillan, page 142
2. Done or performed with a conscious purpose or intent.
   • Most human activity is purposive.

   Synonyms:

   deliberate, intentional, purposeful, advertent, conscious, witting, on purpose, volitational, volitional, voluntary

3. Pertaining to purpose, as reflected in behaviour or mental activity.
   • Ursula could not believe the air in her nostrils. It seemed conscious, malevolent, purposive in its intense murderous coldness.1920 November 9, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter 29, in Women in Love, New York, N.Y.: Privately printed [by Thomas Seltzer] for subscribers only, →OCLC, page 453
4. Pertaining to or demonstrating purpose.
   • The world was generally agreed to be a purposive one, responsive to the wishes of its Creator […].1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society, published 2012, page 78
5. Possessed of a firm purpose.
   • I had a purposive air about me that night.

   Synonyms:

   determined, resolute

6. Of a clause or conjunction: expressing purpose.
   • Many scholars suggest that […] the increase in the use of the to-infinitive in Middle English took place at the expense of the bare infinitive (i.e. an infinitive without the marker to). […] due to the loss of verbal inflections, it became difficult to distinguish the infinitival form from other...2004, Olga Fischer et al., chapter 7, in The Syntax of Early English, Cambridge University Press, page 212

See all 7 meanings of purposive