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intensive purposes or intents and purposes?
If you are casting about for the phrase that is used to say that “one thing has the same effect or result as something else,” you are looking for for all intents and purposes; you are not looking for intensive purposes. Your purposes may indeed be intensive in some way (we don’t want to know the details), but these two words are not commonly found together as an idiom. The pairing of intents and purposes comes from a 1546 Act of Parliament conveying that King Henry VIII had unlimited power to interpret laws; it contained the phrase “to all intents, constructions, and purposes.”
Synonyms
Examples of intensive in a Sentence
Kristen Jordan Shamus, Detroit Free Press, 20 Nov. 2024
Research shows that intensive animal agriculture has been implicated in influenza viruses jumping from animals to people, and some believe this bird flu could even become the source of our next pandemic.
—Seema Policepatil, The Mercury News, 19 Nov. 2024
Christian Zilko, IndieWire, 8 July 2024
The first part of the two-week Incubator will be a four-day intensive focused on workshopping selected one-hour drama pilots, deepening pitch skills and gaining access and insights into the FX development process.
—Lexi Carson, Variety, 14 June 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Intensive.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intensive. Accessed 28 Nov. 2024.
Copy CitationKids Definition
intensive
1 of 2 adjective
intensive
2 of 2 nounMedical Definition
intensive
adjective
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