Intending

How to spell intending

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce intending

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does intending mean?

1. verbHaving a plan or purpose to do something; meaning to act in a particular way.

Intending in a sentence

• She sent the email while intending to follow up with a phone call later.

• The company is intending to open two new branches next year.

Where does intending come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb intendere, which literally meant 'to stretch toward' or 'to direct one's attention to', built from the prefix in- meaning 'toward' and the verb tendere meaning 'to stretch'. The image was concrete: a person stretching the mind, the gaze, or even a drawn bow toward some target. Romans used it for aiming and for purposing, and that sense of mental aiming survived as the word passed through Old French entendre into Middle English in the 1300s. The same tendere root gives us a large family of relatives, including 'tend', 'extend', 'tension', and 'attention', all carrying that core idea of stretching. The present participle 'intending' simply adds the -ing ending, keeping the single n and single t of the root, which is where careless writers occasionally slip.

How the word is built

• in- (toward)
• tend (from Latin tendere: to stretch)
• -ing (present participle)