Meaning of intent in English

intent

adjective

/ɪnˈtent/ us

/ɪnˈtent/

Add to word list Add to word list

giving all your attention to something:

an intent stare

She had an intent look on her face.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Cautious and vigilant

See more results »

be intent on something/doing something

to be determined to do or achieve something:

I've tried persuading her not to go but she's intent on it.

Related word

intently

intent

noun [ U ]

law formal or specialized

/ɪnˈtent/ us

/ɪnˈtent/

the fact that you want and plan to do something:

I spent half the morning on the phone, which wasn't really my intent.

[ + to infinitive ] It was not his intent to hurt anyone.

with intent to She was charged with possessing weapons with intent to endanger life.

Synonyms

aim  (INTENTION)
ambition
aspiration (HOPE)
dream  (HOPE)
goal (AIM)
hope 
intention
object  (PURPOSE)
objective 
target  (AIM)

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Planning, expecting and arranging

See more results »

Idiom

to/for all intents and purposes

(Definition of intent from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

intent | American Dictionary

intent

adjective

/ɪnˈtent/

intent adjective (GIVING ATTENTION)

Add to word list Add to word list

giving all your attention to something:

an intent look

intent adjective (DETERMINED)

determined, esp. in a way that seems silly or harmful:

The climbers wereintent on reaching the mountaintop despite the freezing temperatures.

intent

noun [ U ]

fml

/ɪnˈtent/

something that you intend or intended to do:

There was clearly no intent to cause harm, and the judge ruled that the injury was accidental.

Idiom

for all intents and purposes

(Definition of intent from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

intent | Business English

intent

noun [ U ]

/ɪnˈtent/ us

Add to word list Add to word list

the intention to do something:

intent to do sth He announced his intent to resign.

intent of (doing) sth The intent of business research is to improve the general understanding of the dynamics of the business environment.

a letter/statement/declaration of intent

LAW

an intention to do something illegal:

The two men did not act with criminal intent.

(Definition of intent from the Cambridge Business English Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of intent

intent

Communicative intents expressed by parents in interaction with young children.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Communicative intents of parents interacting with their young children.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The social-pragmatic account of this effect rests on the presumption that children have certain expectations about people's referential intents.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Thirdly, relationships between the different communicative intents measures and the amount of talk were addressed.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Despite all intents and purposes, the new language policy has not, save on paper, corrected this legacy.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

After retrieving relevant components, the designers select a general method to achieve their intents.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Many scenarios cut across lines of individual intents, expectations, and goals.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Differences were only found in parents' use of directing intents and joint discussions.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

To all intents and purposes they share a setting, but the ways in which they relate to their sites are radically different.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The energy-conserving trapezoidal rule, though, produces a tra jectory which to all intents and purposes is periodic.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Results indicated that parents of both groups engaged in similar proportions of common intents, such as negotiating immediate activities and negotiating mutual attention.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

However, the absence of an effective social security system meant that the government's response to these problems was for all intents and purposes non-existent.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

In addition, widely differing semantic intents may be mapped into the same output construction.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

In all the cases calculated, the pressure fluctuations are, for all intents and purposes, confined to regions inside the jet flow.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

We then trained a bootstrapped model, using 13 call-types from the library and a few simple rules written manually for three frequent intents.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

See all examples of intent

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

Collocations with intent

intent

These are words often used in combination with intent.

Click on a collocation to see more examples of it.

aggressive intent

I believe that that aggressive intent is more indirect than direct.

From the

Hansard archive

Example from the Hansard archive. Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0

communicative intent

Within the scheme outlined above the new proposal can be classified as a directed search with strong communicative intent.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

criminal intent

Many shopkeepers were prosecuted for contravening these requirements: this was probably explained as much by their incapacity to monitor their own businesses as any criminal intent.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

See all collocations with intent

What is the pronunciation of intent?