intentionally

The Latin expression ad directum arrived in Catalan as adret, which later derived in our language in intentionally. It is an adverb that is used to indicate that a action It was carried out intentionally; that is it was done on purpose.

For example: "Investigators believe that the offender deliberately caused the crash to generate confusion and thus be able to flee the scene", "That was missing! He hit me on purpose! ", "I think Ramiro deliberately withheld information so that we would not be aware of his behavior".

We can easily understand what the notion refers to on purpose if we oppose it to what is accidental. This distinction between intentional and accidental can be of great importance. Suppose, in a match of football, a player touch the ball with your hand in the area that your team defends. If the referee considers that the player took the action on purpose (that is, if he believes that he touched the ball with his hand on purpose), he will charge penal, since he did something that is punishable by regulation. On the other hand, if the judge thinks that the athlete did not intend to hit the ball with his hand, he will let the play continue without charging a foul.

Let us now take the case of a person that you are upset that your neighbor listens to music at a very high volume. If you think that the subject is turning up the volume without realizing that it could harm those who live nearby, it is likely that they will go to your house and ask you to please turn down the music. On the contrary, if you feel that this is something on purpose to make others uncomfortable, you can report it for "annoying noises" so that the authorities punish.

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 perform certain actions consciously and voluntarily, although its consequences are not always damaging for everyone else. In some cases, such as 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 annoy the neighbors, his intentions have a different character.

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 correspond to them, get something that doesn't belong to them, be it a victory or the right to act in a certain way in the middle of a community of neighbors.

On the other hand, the word purposely 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 which he considers fair, either to himself or to 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 that reason, he places a camera in a strategic location and leaves it on to capture the theft on video. His behavior is deliberate, but he has the intention to help a third party to combat an action that it considers unfair.

This concept can be expressed in various 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 intentionally, therefore, it is also possible to say to purpose, bet, deliberately, willfully, knowingly, expressly, deliberately Y ex profeso (an adverbial phrase from Latin, the language in which it is written ex professo).