purposive

1. 1.

   having or showing or acting with a purpose or design

   “purposive behavior”

   Similarnonrandom
2. 2.

   having a purpose

   “purposive behavior”

   Synonymsgoal-directed

   Similarpurposeful

Questions about purposive

What does purposive mean?

purposive means "having or showing or acting with a purpose or design". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in purposive?

purposive has 3 syllables: pur-po-sive. The stress falls on "pur".

What is another word for purposive?

Close synonyms include goal-directed. 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 purposive a common word?

purposive 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.