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)

Noun

(en noun)

Model, example.

# Something from which a copy is made; a model or outline.

#* 1923 , ‘President Wilson’, Time , 18 Jun 1923:

There is no reason why all colleges and universities should be cut to the same pattern .

# Someone or something seen as an example to be imitated; an exemplar.

#* 1946 , Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy , I.16:

The Platonic Socrates was a pattern to subsequent philosophers for many ages.

#

#

# A representative example.

# (US) The material needed to make a piece of clothing.

# (textiles) The paper or cardboard template from which the parts of a garment are traced onto fabric prior to cutting out and assembling.

# (metalworking, dated) A full-sized model around which a mould of sand is made, to receive the melted metal. It is usually made of wood and in several parts, so as to be removed from the mould without damage.

# (computing) A text string containing wildcards, used for matching.

There were no files matching the pattern *.txt.

Decorative arrangement.

# A design, motif or decoration, especially formed from regular repeated elements.

#* 2003 , Valentino, ‘Is there a future in fashion's past?’, Time , 5 Feb 2003:

On my way to work the other day, I stopped at a church in Rome and saw a painting of the Madonna. The subtle pattern of blues and golds in the embroidery of her dress was so amazing that I used it to design a new evening dress for my haute couture.

# A naturally-occurring or random arrangement of shapes, colours etc. which have a regular or decorative effect.

#* 2011 , Rachel Cooke, The Observer , 19 Jun 2011:

He lifted the entire joint or fowl up into the air, speared on a carving fork, and sliced pieces off it so that they fell on the plate below in perfectly organised patterns .

# The given spread, range etc. of shot fired from a gun.

# A particular sequence of events, facts etc. which can be understood, used to predict the future, or seen to have a mathematical, geometric, statistical etc. relationship.

#* 1980 , ‘Shifting Targets’, Time , 6 Oct 1980:

The three killings pointed to an ugly new shift in the enduring pattern of violence in Northern Ireland: the mostly Protestant Ulster police, or those suspected of affiliation with them, have become more prominent targets for the I.R.A. than the British troops.

#* 2003 , Kate Hudson, The Guardian , 14 Aug 2003:

Look again at how the US and its allies behaved then, and the pattern is unmistakable.

# (linguistics) An intelligible arrangement in a given area of language.