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intensive purposes or intents and purposes?
If you are casting about for the phrase that is used to say that “one thing has the same effect or result as something else,” you are looking for for all intents and purposes; you are not looking for intensive purposes. Your purposes may indeed be intensive in some way (we don’t want to know the details), but these two words are not commonly found together as an idiom. The pairing of intents and purposes comes from a 1546 Act of Parliament conveying that King Henry VIII had unlimited power to interpret laws; it contained the phrase “to all intents, constructions, and purposes.”
Synonyms
Examples of intensive in a Sentence
Brigitt Earley, Glamour, 2 July 2024
Loading your audio article Editor’s note: This story is part of the annual Mosaic Journalism Program for Bay Area high school students, an intensive course in journalism.
—Jorge Ramirez Gomez, The Mercury News, 27 June 2024
Christian Zilko, IndieWire, 8 July 2024
The first part of the two-week Incubator will be a four-day intensive focused on workshopping selected one-hour drama pilots, deepening pitch skills and gaining access and insights into the FX development process.
—Lexi Carson, Variety, 14 June 2024
See all Example Sentences for intensive 
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'intensive.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near intensive
Cite this Entry
“Intensive.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intensive. Accessed 15 Jul. 2024.
Copy CitationKids Definition
intensive
1 of 2 adjective
intensive
2 of 2 nounMedical Definition
intensive
adjective
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