for all intents and purposes

1. 1.

   in every practical sense

   “to all intents and purposes the case is closed”

   “the rest are for all practical purposes useless”

   Synonymsfor all practical purposesto all intents and purposes

Questions about for all intents and purposes

What does for all intents and purposes mean?

for all intents and purposes means "in every practical sense".

What is another word for for all intents and purposes?

Close synonyms include for all practical purposes, to all intents and purposes. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is for all intents and purposes a common word?

for all intents and purposes is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.