intended

in-TEN-did/ɪnˈtɛndɪd/

Noun pluralintendeds

4 meanings of intended

Practice

1
verb
Past tense and past participle of intend.
The architect intended the courtyard as a quiet refuge from the street.
The funds were intended for repairs to the old school building.
Note
A regular -ed form that serves as both past tense and participle: the guests intended to stay; the funds had been intended for repairs. It takes a to-infinitive (intended to stay) or, in the passive, for or as (intended for repairs, intended as a refuge). Placed before a noun it becomes the "planned" adjective (an intended result). With a determiner it turns into the noun for a betrothed, the only one with a plural: intendeds.
2
adjective
Meant or planned to be a particular way, reflecting what someone aimed for rather than what happened by chance.
The intended audience for the book was teenagers, not young children.
Her intended meaning was lost somewhere in the translation.
Similarplanned, desired, deliberate, intentional
Oppositeunintended, accidental, unintentional
3
nouncountable
The man or woman to whom one is engaged to be married; one's fiancé or fiancée.
Her intended arrived late to the engagement dinner and apologized to her parents.
He spoke fondly of his intended throughout the long journey home.
Similarbetrothed
Note
The adjective turned into a noun, and it behaves fully like one. It takes a possessive (his intended, her intended) and a regular plural, intendeds, used when suitors approach their "intendeds." Because it covers either partner, it sidesteps the choice between fiancé and fiancée. Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness (1899) capitalizes it, "his Intended," so that it stands almost as a name.

Less common meaning

4
adjectiveobsolete
Stretched tight or drawn out to its full extent; or marked by force and violence.
The same advauncing high above his head, With sharpe intended sting so rude him smott
1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
Note
An obsolete sense that survives only in older poetry. In Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1590), a "sharpe intended sting" is a sting thrust out and stretched to strike, not a planned one. It goes back to intend's old meaning "to stretch, strain, make tense." A modern reader should not read purpose into it, and it has no place in present-day prose.

intended is a form of intend

intend, verb: To have something in mind as a plan or purpose; to mean to do something. Full entry

Forms: intendintends he/she/itintending -ing formintended past tense, past participle
Spelling: intend → intended: add -ed
Sound: The ending sounds like /ɪd/, an extra syllable.

Practice

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