Unpurpose

noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Lack or absence of purpose; purposelessness. rare, uncountable

    "And being. Cant and braggart insolence, And inutility and thoughts which veer From purpose to unpurpose, and the sneer Upon the thin lips of experience, Flee from thy sight as snows when the intense Sun of forgotten summers greets the year."

Verb
  1. 1
    To deprive of a purpose; to remove or derail the purpose of. transitive

    "O, Goodness ! help me to unplan that plan, and to unpurpose that purpose !"

Example

More examples

"And being. Cant and braggart insolence, And inutility and thoughts which veer From purpose to unpurpose, and the sneer Upon the thin lips of experience, Flee from thy sight as snows when the intense Sun of forgotten summers greets the year."

Etymology

From un- + purpose.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.