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on purpose
accidentally on purpose . Seemingly accidentally but actually deliberately, as in She stepped on his foot accidentally on purpose . This generally jocular phrase was first recorded in 1862.
Deliberately, intentionally, as in He left the photo out of the story on purpose . Shakespeare's use of this idiom was among the earliest; it appears in The Comedy of Errors (4:3): “On purpose shut the doors against his way.”
Example Sentences
If one tried to do the thing all at once it would look too on-purpose.
The frontier between France and Spain is a great wide river-on purpose to give us another bridge.
We bucked into the fortunes of war; it's a sort of accident, a sort of on-purpose accident, all the way through.
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