Noun

(en noun)

A written composition of moderate length exploring a particular issue or subject.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-01

, author=Katie L. Burke , title=Ecological Dependency , volume=101, issue=1, page=64 , magazine= citation , passage=In his first book since the 2008 essay collection Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature , David Quammen looks at the natural world from yet another angle: the search for the next human pandemic, what epidemiologists call “the next big one.”}}

(obsolete) A test, experiment; an assay.

An attempt.

* 1988 , James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom , Oxford 2003, p. 455:

This was Lee's first essay in the kind of offensive-defensive strategy that was to become his hallmark.

Noun

(en noun)

A course of action that a person intends to follow.

:

*(Samuel Johnson) (1709-1784) (but see Apocryhpha )

*:Hell is paved with good intentions .

*

*:“My Continental prominence is improving,” I commented dryly. ¶ Von Lindowe cut at a furze bush with his silver-mounted rattan. ¶ “Quite so,” he said as dryly, his hand at his mustache. “I may say if your intentions were known your life would not be worth a curse.”

*{{quote-book, year=1935, author= George Goodchild

, title=Death on the Centre Court, chapter=3 , passage=It had been his intention to go to Wimbledon, but as he himself said: “Why be blooming well frizzled when you can hear all the results over the wireless. And results are all that concern me.

The goal or purpose behind a specific action or set of actions.

:

(lb) Tension; straining, stretching.

*, I.iii.3:

*:cold in those inner parts, cold belly, and hot liver, causeth crudity, and intention proceeds from perturbations […].

A stretching or bending of the mind toward of the mind toward an object; closeness of application; fixedness of attention; earnestness.

*(John Locke) (1632-1705)

*:Intention is when the mind, with great earnestness, and of choice, fixes its view on any idea.

(lb) The object toward which the thoughts are directed; end; aim.

*1732 , (John Arbuthnot), An Essay Concerning the Nature of Ailments … , Prop. II, p.159:

*:In a Word, the most part of chronical Distempers proceed from Laxity of Fibres; in which Case the principal Intention is to restore the Tone of the solid Parts;.

(lb) Any mental apprehension of an object.

(lb) The process of the healing of a wound.

*2007 , Carie Ann Braun, ?Cindy Miller Anderson, Pathophysiology: Functional Alterations in Human Health , p.49:

*:When healing occurs by primary intention , the wound is basically closed with all areas of the wound connecting and healing simultaneously.

(Webster 1913)