What is done on purpose is done intentionally.
On purpose is an adverb that is used to indicate that an action was carried out intentionally ; that is, it was done on purpose . The term in our language comes from the Catalan adret , in turn derived from the Latin expression ad directum .
For example: “Investigators believe that the criminal deliberately caused the crash to create confusion and thus be able to flee the scene,” “That was a foul! “He hit me on purpose!” , “I think Ramiro purposely hid information so that we would not realize his behavior.”
Examples of on purpose
We can easily understand what the notion of intention refers to if we oppose it to that which is accidental . This distinction between intentional and accidental can be of great importance. Suppose that, in a soccer match, a player touches the ball with his hand in the area defended by his team. If the referee considers that the player carried out the action on purpose (that is, if he believes that he touched the ball with his hand on purpose), he will charge a penalty , since he did something that is punishable in the regulations. On the other hand, if the judge thinks that the athlete had no intention of hitting the ball with his hand, he will allow the play to continue without charging a foul.
Let us now take the case of a person who feels annoyed because his neighbor listens to music at a very high volume. If you think that the subject is turning up the volume without warning that it could harm those who live nearby, it is likely that you will go to his house and ask him to please lower the music. On the contrary, if you feel that it is something done on purpose to bother others, you can report it for “annoying noises” so that the authorities can punish you.
What is developed on purpose turns out to be on purpose.
Conscious and voluntary actions
In the previous examples it can be seen that the term purposely serves to describe different types of situations in which one or more people carry out certain actions consciously and voluntarily , although their consequences are not always harmful to others. In some cases, such as that of the soccer player who touches the ball with his hand, the objective is to benefit from a score that does not correspond to him, while if someone listens to music at a volume that he knows will disturb the neighbors, his intentions have a different nature.
This does not mean that both situations expose a negative nuance, in that they are people who try to occupy a space that does not belong to them, to achieve something that does not belong to them , whether it is a victory or the right to act in a certain way in middle of a community of neighbors.
On the other hand, the word on purpose can be used to describe well-intentioned actions, with which the subject hopes to cause a certain effect on other people to obtain a benefit that he considers fair, either for himself or for a third party.
Let's look at an example to illustrate this possibility: a worker discovers that one of his colleagues steals money from the cash register and wants to report it to his boss, but he knows that he needs proof to do so; For this reason, he places a camera in a strategic location and leaves it on to capture the theft on video. His actions are intentional, but he has the intention of helping a third party fight an action that he considers unfair.
I mean it according to the region
This concept can be expressed in several ways, and in each Spanish-speaking region we find certain differences, especially in the degree of formality associated with each of them.
In addition to on purpose, therefore, it is also possible to say on purpose , deliberately , intentionally, knowingly, expressly, premeditatedly and ex professo (an adverbial phrase from Latin, the language in which ex professo is written).