Meaning of unintention | Babel Free

Definitions

Something that is unintentional.

rare

Examples

“The frameup is an unconscious (occasionally semiconscious) mechanism. An unconscious mechanism is a kink in the mind that makes people do something without knowing why they do it, and often without knowing that they are doing it. It is the sub-rational act of a group, serving in this case, through a series of pointed unintentions, the ends of a governing class.”

“Inconsequence has a way of becoming consequential, and the most illogical sequences may lose their irrationality by merely becoming familiar. Thus, new unintentions emerge from an original lack of intent, and the process may continue indefinitely, with the same eyes never regarding the same film.”

“But the cold, rational spirit of Constructivist sculpture was certainly not the goal of the Baroque penetration—its destruction, really—of classical mass and frontality. The sculptural void—more sympathetically developed by Moore, Hepworth (fig. 7–56), and Arp (fig. 7–5)—is better understood as an instance of the law of unintended consequences. Happily, the history of art records many such unintentions.”

“The Unintentions of a Framer / The story of George Washington’s role in the founding of our constitutional traditions is not one of unrelenting success. As President he aspired to much that went unfulfilled during his two terms in office. In several significant ways, in fact, constitutional practices developed quite differently from what he had envisioned. But even here, Washington’s role in the development of new and important constitutional forms was substantial, albeit unintended.”

“What culpable innocence, for now we see / The point is poetry’s unreadability / Where unintentions couple and produce / Meanings unmeant and monsters on the loose / Less rational than that of Frankenstein / Who wished to be understood.”

“Living honestly with yourself under all circumstances is a major key in true happiness. And fate is the exactitude of unintentions.”

“The play exemplifies the potential gap between the effective realization of a speaker’s intention and the actual consequences of her speech acts, and allows us to consider the reasons why some speakers are more successful than others. It also demonstrates the multiplicity and uncontrollability of perlocutionary effects associated with utterances, as illustrated by Abigail’s accusation and Tituba’s subsequent ‘confession’. We are in the privileged position of being aware of the intentions (and ‘unintentions’) of the characters, something which is not always possible in everyday conversation.”

“Reach out your good hand. Try and touch. Tables and shelves and gnomes and whirligigs of all description. A phantasmic, freakish familiar gallery of your own unintentions. / “I was supposed to be a pilot. This all never should have happened.””

“If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, what road is paved with unintentions?”

“The suggestion is that smog should be considered part of the built environment, as material culture; however, it has a negative quality. It is the product of “human unintentions” and lack of knowledge.”

“Over the next few weeks we had the rest of our children over to reveal something of our intentions, although I’m quite sure a number of unintentions were exposed as well.”

“The now sizable and prospering domain of nanoscale research (NSR) may be regarded as an unintended consequence of two research projects. Each project yielded unintended results, and NSR is the child of the fusion of these twin unintentions.”

“In the museum, black patches punctuate white oiled surfaces, life smudging through the daunting unintentions to quiet us for good.”

CEFR level