purposive

/ˈpəːpəsɪv/US/ˈpɚpəsɪv/

purposive adjective: serving a particular purpose; useful; adapted to a given purpose, especially through natural evolution.

Adjective

purposive (comparative more purposive, superlative most purposive)

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
- As we saw in our discussion of the FAKE GUN example in chapter 19, there are natural dimensions to our categories for objects: […] purposive, based on the uses we can make of an object in a given situation.1980, George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, chapter 24, in Metaphors We Live By
Done or performed with a conscious purpose or intent.
- Most human activity is purposive.
- It would have been quite impossible to use the A vocabulary for literary purposes or for political or philosophical discussion. It was intended only to express simple, purposive thoughts, usually involving concrete objects or physical actions.1949 June 8, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], “Appendix. The Principles of Newspeak.”, in Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC; republished [Australia]: Project...
Synonyms:

deliberate, intentional, purposeful, advertent, conscious, witting, on purpose, volitational, volitional, voluntary
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
- The question at once arises whether medieval thinkers really believed that what we now call inanimate objects were sentient and purposive.1964, C. S. Lewis, chapter 5, in The Discarded Image, Cambridge University Press, page 93
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
Possessed of a firm purpose.
- I had a purposive air about me that night.
- Whenever she opened a scientific book and saw whole paragraphs of incomprehensible words and symbols, she felt a sense of wonder at the great territories of learning that lay beyond her—the sum of so many noble and purposive attempts to make objective sense of the world.1993, Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy, Boston: Little, Brown, Part One, 1.15, p. 45
Synonyms:

determined, resolute
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

Noun

purposive (uncountable)

A mood indicating a purpose of the course of activity expressed by the verb.
- This purposive was described by speakers as referring to the action which can be observed at the moment of speech; this is why it is termed ‘visual’.2003, Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, “16 - Mood and modality”, in A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia, Cambridge University Press, →DOI, →ISBN, page 393

Examples of purposive in a sentence

Other ecclesiastics [...] were similarly accepting of a space for purposive and beneficent human action and betterment in a disenchanted world.2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 191:
As a result […] to began to function as a mere marker of the infinitive, losing its original ‘purposive’ sense […]2004, Olga Fischer et al., chapter 7, in The Syntax of Early English, Cambridge University Press, page 212:

Synonyms of purposive

3 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of purposive

Forms of purposive

comparative	more purposive
superlative	most purposive

Origin of purposive

From purpose + -ive. Compare purpositive.

Words formed from purposive

Questions about purposive

What does purposive mean?: Purposive means serving a particular purpose; useful; adapted to a given purpose, especially through natural evolution.
How do you use purposive in a sentence?: Other ecclesiastics [...] were similarly accepting of a space for purposive and beneficent human action and betterment in a disenchanted world.
What part of speech is purposive?: Purposive can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce purposive?: Purposive is pronounced /ˈpəːpəsɪv/ (UK).

Words near purposive in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: purposive (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

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