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the mind toward an object; closeness of application; fixedness of attention; earnestness. Intention is when the mind, with great earnestness, and of choice, fixes its view on any idea. Locke.

Done by intention or design; intended; designed; as, the act was intentional, not accidental.

The quality or state of being intentional; purpose; design. Coleridge.

In an intentional manner; with intention; by design; of purpose.

Having designs; -- chiefly used in composition; as, well- intentioned, having good designs; ill-intentioned, having ill designs.

Having upright intentions or honorable purposes. Dutchmen who had sold themselves to France, as the wellintentioned party. Macaulay.

In an accidental manner; unexpectedly; by chance; unintentionally; casually; fortuitously; not essentially.

he charge, formerly by from; as, the jury acquitted the prisoner; we acquit a man of evil intentions.

; active. [Obs.] Her walking and other actual performances. Shak. Let your holy and pious intention be actual; that is . . . by a special prayer or action, . . . given to God. Jer. Taylor.

Intention; purpose; design; scheme. How oft ambitious aims are crossed! Pope.

circumstances. The real subject is thus kept out of view, and we are left to collect the intentions of the writer or speaker by the resemblance of the secondary to the primary subject.

Animating spirit; intention; temper. nimus furandi Etym: [L.] (Law), intention of stealing.

to disapprobation; justification; as, Tertullian's Apology for Christianity. It is not my intention to make an apology for my poem; some will think it needs no excuse, and others will receive none. Dryden.

his blindness maimed for high attempts. Milton. Attempt to commit a crime (Law), such an intentional preparatory act as will apparently result, if not extrinsically hindered, in a crime which it was designed to effect. Wharton.

To miss intentionally; to avoid; to shun; to refuse; to let go by; to shirk. [Obs. or Obsolescent] By reason of the contagion then in London, we balked the Evelyn. Sick he is, and keeps his bed, and balks his meat. Bp. Hall. Nor doth he any creature balk, But lays on all he meeteth. Drayton.

To disclose or discover, as something which prudence would conceal; to reveal unintentionally. Be swift to hear, but cautious of your tongue, lest you betray your ignorance. T. Watts.

To receive from another as a loan, with the implied or expressed intention of returning the identical article or its equivalent in kind; -- the opposite of lend.

or something else; as, to change the clothes; to change one's occupation; to change one's intention. They that do change old love for new, Pray gods, they change for worse! Peele.

The obtaining of property from another by an intentional active distortion of the truth.

To talk or confer secretly and confidentially; to converse, especially with evil intentions; to plot mischief. [Archaic or Colloq.] Pray go in; and, sister, salve the matter, Collogue with her again, and all shall be well. Greene. He had been colloguing with my wife. Thackeray.