Other forms: designed, designs, designing
To design is to plan how something new will look and work before it is made. Design a building, design a website, designed for children.
The word covers both the intention and the drawing of it. The noun means the plan, the field of work, and the arrangement itself: graphic design, an interesting design, the design of the engine. By design means deliberately, against by accident — and that contrast is the sharpest use of the word. Note designer, both the job and the adjective meaning expensive and branded: designer jeans, a designer handbag.
1verbdesignTo plan how something new will look and work.
“She designed the whole building in eight months.”
2nounarrangementThe plan or arrangement of something.
“The design has not changed since 1968.”
3noundecorativeA decorative pattern.
“There is a design of birds around the rim.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
design is a plan or arrangement.
Latin designare is de-, out, plus signum, a mark — to mark out. Sign, signal, signature and design share the root, and the oldest English sense of design was simply to indicate: the plan is a mark made before the thing exists.
Latin
designō
Old French
designer
Middle English
designen
English, today
design
Built from
From Middle English designen, from Old French designer, from Latin designō. From Middle English designen, from Old French designer, from Latin designō (“to mark out, point out, describe, design, contrive”), from de- (or dis-) + signō (“to mark”), from signum (“mark”). a doublet of designate.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA