English Dictionary

ON PURPOSE

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IPA (US): 

 Dictionary entry overview: What does on purpose mean? 

ON PURPOSE (adverb)
  The adverb ON PURPOSE has 1 sense:

1. with intention; in an intentional mannerplay

  Familiarity information: ON PURPOSE used as an adverb is very rare.


 Dictionary entry details 


ON PURPOSE (adverb)


Sense 1

Meaning:

With intention; in an intentional manner

Synonyms:

advisedly; by choice; by design; deliberately; designedly; intentionally; on purpose; purposely

Context example:

I did this by choice


 Context examples 


My dear Miss Price, I beg your pardon, but I have made my way to you on purpose to entreat your help.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

However, he is coming, I assure you: yes, indeed, on purpose to wait on you all.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

We made easy journeys, of not above seven or eight score miles a-day; for Glumdalclitch, on purpose to spare me, complained she was tired with the trotting of the horse.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

He was then, he said, on his way to Longbourn on purpose to inquire after her.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

I remained behind on purpose to see the boat completed.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

We were asked on purpose to be introduced.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

My friend Lord Courtland came to me the other day on purpose to ask my advice, and laid before me three different plans of Bonomi's.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

I pitched it in red-hot on purpose; and before the hour's out, as he said, we shall be boarded.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

They don't do it on purpose, and most outgrow it.

(Bedwetting, NIH)

I put my question quickly and somewhat sternly, on purpose to disconcert him.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)



 Learn English with... Proverbs 
"There's no time like the present." (English proverb)

"Keep your eyes on the sun and you will not see the shadows." (Aboriginal Australian proverbs)

"Time is made of gold." (Arabic proverb)

"God's mills mill slowly, but surely." (Czech proverb)


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