unintention

unintention noun: something that is unintentional.

Noun

unintention (plural unintentions)

(rare) Something that is unintentional.
- The frameup is an unconscious (occasionally semiconscious) mechanism. An unconscious mechanism is a kink in the mind that makes people do something without knowing why they do it, and often without knowing that they are doing it. It is the sub-rational act of a group, serving in this case, through...1927, John Dos Passos, Facing the Chair: Story of the Americanization of Two Foreignborn Workmen, Boston, Mass.: Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, page 55
- Inconsequence has a way of becoming consequential, and the most illogical sequences may lose their irrationality by merely becoming familiar. Thus, new unintentions emerge from an original lack of intent, and the process may continue indefinitely, with the same eyes never regarding the same film.1970, Sidney Peterson, “A Note on Comedy in Experimental Film”, in P. Adams Sitney, editor, Film Culture Reader, New York, N.Y.: Praeger Publishers, →LCCN, section five (Overviews and Theoretical...

It is the sub-rational act of a group, serving in this case, through a series of pointed unintentions, the ends of a governing class.1927, John Dos Passos, Facing the Chair: Story of the Americanization of Two Foreignborn Workmen, Boston, Mass.: Sacco-Vanzetti Defense...
Happily, the history of art records many such unintentions.1985, Edmund Burke Feldman, “[Sculpture] Holes, Voids, Apertures”, in Thinking About Art, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc....
The Unintentions of a Framer / The story of George Washington’s role in the founding of our constitutional traditions is not one of unrelenting success.1993, Glenn A. Phelps, George Washington and American Constitutionalism (American Political Thought), Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of...
And fate is the exactitude of unintentions.1997, “LOCKWOOD, NATALIE”, in The National Library of Poetry, edited by Melisa S. Mitchell, Through the Looking Glass, Owings Mills, Md....

plural	unintentions

Back-formation from unintentional. By surface analysis, un- + intention.

What does unintention mean?: Unintention means something that is unintentional.
How do you use unintention in a sentence?: It is the sub-rational act of a group, serving in this case, through a series of pointed unintentions, the ends of a governing class.
What part of speech is unintention?: Unintention is a noun.
What is the plural of unintention?: The plural of unintention is unintentions.

Adapted from Wiktionary: unintention (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: “unintention.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/unintention. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.