purposive

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

His subsequent efforts were as varied, if more grimly purposive, as the death-obsessed male protagonist’s stagings in “Harold and Maude,” or Bill Murray as Phil Connors, trying to escape the time loop in “Groundhog Day.”

From New York Times • Mar. 26, 2023

Public policy is the broad strategy government uses to do its job, the relatively stable set of purposive governmental behaviors that address matters of concern to some part of society.

From Textbooks • Jul. 28, 2021

They were grim, purposive pleas about “making a plan” that might involve multiple brown bag meals and waiting in line for hours.

From Slate • Aug. 21, 2020

If there is any hope for a better world, it lies in the daily effort to expand the circle of those we believe should be treated as full, purposive and dignified human beings.

From Washington Post • Aug. 1, 2019

For them, as we saw in Chapter 9, the argument from design depended on envisaging the universe as manufactured, rather than on showing nature itself to be purposive.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton