Other forms: intentions
Your intention is what you mean to do, the plan behind the action and before it. I came here with every intention of paying. It was not my intention to wake you.
It stands next to intent, the drier legal twin: a court asks about intent, a person talks about their intentions. Watch the frames around it, the intention of doing something, the intention to do something, with the intention of. In the plural it can mean how you mean to treat someone, which is why the old-fashioned father asks a young man about his intentions. Good intentions are the ones that never turned into anything, hence the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The adjectives are intentional and unintentional, and an unintentional insult is one you did not mean to give.
1nounintentionWhat you mean or plan to do.
“She has no intention of moving back to the city.”
synonyms: aim, plan, purpose
2nounpurposeThe purpose behind an action or a text, as others judge it.
“The wording makes the intention of the law clear enough.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
intention is a plan held in someone's mind.
Also accepted in games: aim, intent
Intention reached English from Latin intentio by way of Old French entencion and Middle English entencioun. It is built exactly as it looks, intent plus -ion, which is why the two words still shadow each other: intent belongs to lawyers and intention to the rest of us.
Middle English
entencioun
English, today
intention
From Middle English entencioun. From Middle English entencioun, intention, from Old French entencion, from Latin intentio. Compare intent. Equivalent to intent + ion.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA