English can be confusing enough for someone who has grown up as a native speaker, never mind for someone who is trying to learn it as a second language. For every rule in English, there are innumerable exceptions. And then there is the never-ending list of English idioms that either don’t make logical sense or sound too much like other common words. This becomes even more problematic when the idiom is spoken far more often than it is written.
You may have heard the phrase for all intents and purposes used before and you may have also seen it written incorrectly as for all intensive purposes. When you break down exactly what the idiom is supposed to mean, you’ll understand why the former is right and the latter is not.
When someone says that something is a certain way “for all intents and purposes,” he or she is saying that it is the case for every practical way or in every important regard. There may be some minor quibbles or details to the contrary, but “for all intents and purposes,” this is true.
For all intents and purposes, Jim was given free rein over how to run the company.
In the example above, we can safely assume that Jim now has effective control over the company and the direction it is going to take. Yes, he may be limited by budget and he may not have the official title of CEO, but Jim can go about running the company in whatever fashion he wishes. In every practical way, he’s the boss.
Quite literally, “all intents and purposes” would refer to all the possible intents and every practical purpose. It is incorrect to use “for all intensive purposes,” because we’re not referring only to the purposes that are intense; we’re referring to all of practical purposes.
Is there a particular English idiom that bothers you? Is there another grammar, spelling or punctuation issue that you would like to see explored in a future Grammar 101 post? Let me know through the comment section below!
Through the peregrinative process whereby one link leads to another, I came across your article entitled “Say Hello to Windows 10 (Because 7 Ate 9)”, on Futurelooks, and I thought the title was exceptionally clever, and entirely apropos. Kudos! That, in turn, brought me here, so, more specifically to the topic at hand, my wife and I were driving home Wednesday evening, and the expression “a wild hare up one’s *” came up in conversation. She confessed that she had always thought the H word used was “hair”, which, if analyzed (pun intended) in the manner you describe in this article (“For All Intents and Purposes”), makes little, if any, sense. On the other hand, a wild “hare” so positioned would tend to cause one to be rather jumpy, leaping toward some unexpected action.
This area of English usage is of particular interest to me, having been brought up in a household with three native speakers: a father who matriculated with an interest in journalism and graduated cum laude with a double major in English and history, attending Wake Forest University (then College) on the G.I. Bill after WWII; a mother who graduated high school at the top of her class, and was as knowledgable regarding English usage as her husband; and a brother who is 11 years my senior, also one of the best scholars at his high school. They all read voraciously, and proper grammar and correct syntax were de riguer at home. (I just double-checked the precise meaning of “matriculate” at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/matriculate, and a usage example given was “Wake Forest is one of more than 100 colleges and universities across the country where a computer is now required to matriculate.” (!) That kind of coincidental/synchronous occurrence I call “Golden-Tongued Wisdom”, a sort of divine tap-on-the-shoulder, or an “Ago? – Are you listening?” from the Cosmic Griot, to which I respond with a resounding “Ameh! – I hear!”)
There are three trends in English usage that have gone from epidemic to endemic, which rather get under my skin. The first is the deliberate stripping of the preposition from expressions such as “bailed out”, “caved in”, “pissed off”, etc.. There is a mindlessness to that practice, a smug, self-satisfied arrogance that has its genesis in the desire to “out-cool” the “old-school”. “Pissed off” means irritated to the point of infuriation, while “pissed” means drunk; “caved in” is having acceded or surrendered to the will of another or others, but “caved” is to have gone spelunking; “bailed out” means having jumped ship or abandoned an endeavour, while “bailed” is to have manually removed water from the bilges. What blatant idiocy!
Second is the across-the-board employment of “this” for “a, an, the, this and that”, and “these” for both “these” and “those”. That (not this) is an extremely irritating practice, and shows a great lack of discernment on the part of the user. It apparently has its roots in the ignorant metropolitan environments of the American northeast and Chicago (“Dere wuz dis guy, see, and he wuz sellin’ dese crates o’ hooch…”), but is utterly rampant is spoken and written English today. Need I say more?
Third is the stand-up-comedic compulsion to relate events one has participated in or observed using pseudo-self-quotations and childishly-emotive dramatization: “I was like, ‘Blah, blah, blah…’.” I had never heard that kind of thing until an evening-news reporter for one of the major American broadcast networks did a little “human interest” story on the trend in California, and within weeks, it had infected the speech of millions, and I began hearing it all over my area of the east coast. What is particularly maddening is the expansion of it into “I was just kind of like, ‘*!'” Ugh!
I could elaborate further on those “surfer dude/ Valley girl” utterances, along with the one-upmanship of the pursuit of ever-greater levels of “coolness” that drives them, but the overall effect is to badly corrode the English language, especially spoken English, and sadly, it is that sort of drivel that non-native or ESL speakers adopt when immigrating, because they pick it up from TV or movies, and think that speaking that way is how to best fit in and be quickly accepted when they arrive in the U.S..
Anyway, I am going to read more of what you’ve posted, Michael — keep up the good work! Cheers
Wow! Thanks for this incredible comment! I was, like, you know, amazed. 😉 (Sorry)