Intensive Purposes

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Tony from upstate New York.

Hi, Tony. How you doing?

Hey, Tony.

I have a supervisor and a friend of mine who uses a phrase, and I think he uses it incorrectly.

And he uses the term for all intensive purposes. Now, I believe he’s using it wrong. I think it’s intense and purposes, but my second part of the question is, is it a law term? For some reason, I believe I heard it in the past.

Uses some sort of law speak.

Is that correct? Okay.

So he’s saying intensive purposes, I-N-T E-N-S-I-V-E P-U-R-P-O-S-E-S.

And you’re saying it should be intense, I-N-T-E-N-T-S and A-N-D purposes. Yes, that’s correct.

So for all intense and purposes. Yep.

And we can tell you that you are absolutely correct. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Okay. So now I have a little credibility when I put him on the spot.

Yeah, the question is, do you put your boss on the spot, though?

Yeah, you might want to keep all these things and ponder them in your heart.

Right. And that’s why I haven’t said anything up to this point.

And I’ve been listening to your show, and I thought this might be a good thing for you guys to help me sort out.

Well, Tony, we can do that. Actually, you’re right. It was a legal term.

Originally, the term was for all intense constructions and purposes.

And this was back in 1546 under Henry VIII in England.

And it meant to cover all eventualities.

Right.

So it means no matter what happens, that’s kind of what you’re saying.

Yeah.

And it does have the ring of those kinds of legal terms that are supposed to cover everything, like null and void, intents and purposes, that kind of thing.

I mean, you don’t really hear intent that much unless it’s in the context of law with intent to murder.

Intent as a noun is kind of rare in mainstream English.

It’s one of the reasons why people kind of reanalyze this expression when they hear it and think it’s probably intensive, which is a far more common word.

But intent or intense as a plural noun just is kind of so rare.

It’s a little strange.

It seems unlikely to people.

Yeah.

Now, you had another question in there, which we should tease out, which is whether or not intensive purposes has become accepted.

And I would argue that there’s nobody who is accepting intensive purposes except people who don’t know that they’re saying it incorrectly.

Which I did for years and years and years and years.

Well, one of the things that I wrestle with is he is a friend of mine, and I think maybe it’s my obligation to let him know he’s using this incorrectly so that he doesn’t go into a formal meeting or engagement somewhere where he uses this and, you know, he may not look so appropriate when he uses it.

How do you think he would take that?

I think he would take it pretty well.

Oh, okay.

Because your motives are pure, are good anyway.

I don’t know about pure, but they’re good.

Yeah.

I would think saving somebody from embarrassing themselves would be important.

Yeah, I think to do that privately.

We always advise doing that kind of thing privately.

And, you know, you could present it as, here’s this really cool thing. Did you know this phrase goes all the way back to Henry VIII?

Mm—

All right.

You are my life coach.

And people have been missaying it as intensive purposes for at least 100 years.

Understood.

Yeah.

So he’s not alone.

That’s the other thing.

Give him a little bit of relief by telling him he’s not the only one doing it incorrectly.

Oh, yeah.

It’s incredibly common.

As I said, I did it for decades.

I will take everything under advisement, and we’ll see how it goes.

Send us an update, Tony.

Let us know, all right?

All right.

Thanks for your time.

Take care now.

Thanks, Tony.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

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