unpurposed
unpurposed adjective: without purpose.
Adjective
unpurposed (comparative more unpurposed, superlative most unpurposed)
- Without purpose.
- If that Law did well to reduce from liberty to bondage for an ingratitude not the greatest, much more became it the Law of God to enact the restorement of a free born man from an unpurpos’d, and unworthy bondage to a rightfull liberty for the most unnatural fraud and ingratitude that can be...1645 March 14 (Gregorian calendar), John Milton, Tetrachordon: Expositions upon the Foure Chief Places in Scripture, which Treat of Mariage, or Nullities in Mariage. […], London: [s.n.], →OCLC, page...
- He was distinguished from his fellows by the fact that each year he grew more aware that he hadn’t even a dim candle of talent; that he was ill-planned and unpurposed; that he would have to settle down to the ordinary gray limbo of jobs and offices […]1917, Sinclair Lewis, The Job, New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., Part I, Chapter 5, §3, p. 60
- Synonyms:
- aimless, goalless, purposeless
- Not deliberate.
- When I did make thee free, sworest thou not then
To do this when I bade thee? Do it at once;
Or thy precedent services are all
But accidents unpurposed.c. 1606–1607 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard... - […] the Lord will surely accept him and forgive his unpurposed offences and sinnes of meere weakenesse and frailty.1640, William Whately, Prototypes, London: Edward Langham, The Thirteenth Example, pp. 199-200
- Synonyms:
- inadvertent, undesigned, unintended, unintentional, accidental, designless, involuntary, unplanned, unwitting
- When I did make thee free, sworest thou not then
Examples of unpurposed in a sentence
- ‘Your questions about Mrs Jepp, I can’t possibly answer them, ‘said Mervyn, looking at his watch but unpurposed, settling into his chair […]1957, Muriel Spark, chapter 7, in The Comforters, London: Macmillan:
- It was written in very small characters—perhaps an unpurposed indication of the misgivings with which she allowed herself to pen the words.1893, George Gissing, chapter 7, in The Odd Women, volume I, London: Lawrence & Bullen, page 188:
Synonyms of unpurposed
Forms of unpurposed
| comparative | more unpurposed |
|---|---|
| superlative | most unpurposed |
Origin of unpurposed
From un- + purposed.
Questions about unpurposed
- What does unpurposed mean?
- Unpurposed means without purpose.
- How do you use unpurposed in a sentence?
- ‘Your questions about Mrs Jepp, I can’t possibly answer them, ‘said Mervyn, looking at his watch but unpurposed, settling into his chair […]
- What part of speech is unpurposed?
- Unpurposed is an adjective.
Words near unpurposed in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: unpurposed (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: “unpurposed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/unpurposed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.