Friday, May 15, 2009

All Intents (and Purposes)

It sounds snazzy, but is the phrase "all intents and purposes" redundant? "Intent" and "purpose" do not have precisely identical meanings, but in this particular usage I believe they do. Someone on WikiAnswers seems to agree with me and wrote the following in response to an inquiry regarding the idiom:
"If you have problems with to all intents and purposes bear in mind that in that expression intents is redundant."

No comments:

Post a Comment