purposive

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Etymology tree

Middle English purpos

English purpose

Proto-Indo-European *-wós

Proto-Indo-European *-iHwósder.

Latin -īvus

Old French -ifbor.

Middle English -yf

English -ive

English purposive

From purpose + -ive. Compare purpositive.

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.
Done or performed with a conscious purpose or intent. Most human activity is purposive.
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.
Pertaining to or demonstrating purpose. The world was generally agreed to be a purposive one, responsive to the wishes of its Creator […].
Possessed of a firm purpose. I had a purposive air about me that night.
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 ver

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’.