unpurposed

comparative more unpurposed · superlative most unpurposed

1. Without purpose.

   ‘Your questions about Mrs Jepp, I can’t possibly answer them, ‘said Mervyn, looking at his watch but unpurposed, settling into his chair […]

   1957, Muriel Spark, chapter 7, in The Comforters, London: Macmillan

   2 more examples

   If that Law did well to reduce from liberty to bondage for an ingratitude not the greatest, much more became it the Law of God to enact the restorement of a free born man from an unpurpos’d, and unworthy bondage to a rightfull liberty for the most unnatural fraud and ingratitude that can be committed against him.

   1645 March 14 (Gregorian calendar), John Milton, Tetrachordon: Expositions upon the Foure Chief Places in Scripture, which Treat of Mariage, or Nullities in Mariage. […], London: [s.n.], →OCLC, page 32

   He was distinguished from his fellows by the fact that each year he grew more aware that he hadn’t even a dim candle of talent; that he was ill-planned and unpurposed; that he would have to settle down to the ordinary gray limbo of jobs and offices […]

   1917, Sinclair Lewis, The Job, New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., Part I, Chapter 5, §3, p. 60

   Synonyms: aimless, goalless, purposeless

2. Not deliberate.

   1640, William Whately, Prototypes, London: Edward Langham, The Thirteenth Example, pp. 199-200, […] the Lord will surely accept him and forgive his unpurposed offences and sinnes of meere weakenesse and frailty.

   3 more examples

   When I did make thee free, sworest thou not then To do this when I bade thee? Do it at once; Or thy precedent services are all But accidents unpurposed.

   c. 1606–1607 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene xiv]

   It was written in very small characters—perhaps an unpurposed indication of the misgivings with which she allowed herself to pen the words.

   1893, George Gissing, chapter 7, in The Odd Women, volume I, London: Lawrence & Bullen, page 188

   O pitying strangers, since ye will not hear My old blind father, for some tales ye have heard Of his unpurposed sin, Oh, still give ear To a lost maiden, and accept the word I speak for his sake […]

   1948, Gilbert Murray, transl., Sophocles: Oedipus at Colonus, London: George Allen & Unwin, page 33

   Synonyms: inadvertent, undesigned, unintended, unintentional, accidental, designless, inadvertent, involuntary