Purpose

The English word entered the language around 1300, from Anglo-French purpos, itself from Old French porposer, meaning to put forth or propose.1 The Latin ancestor, prōpōnere, combined prō (forward) with pōnere (to place). The original sense was spatial and external, something placed before you for consideration, not a feeling discovered within.

For most of its history, purpose described an intention attached to an action. A person had purpose in doing something, the way a tool had purpose in being designed for something. The word carried no suggestion of existential depth.

The shift toward purpose as an inner quality, something a person possesses rather than something a person does, accelerated in the twentieth century. Psychologist Viktor Frankl, writing in 1946 after surviving Nazi concentration camps, argued that the search for meaning was the primary motivation in human life.2 His work helped move purpose from the language of action into the language of identity.

By 2009, Simon Sinek's Start With Why reframed purpose as a corporate asset, arguing that organizations that communicate their reason for existing outperform those that lead with products.3 The word that had once described what you intended to do now described who you were supposed to be.

Corporate mission statements began adopting the language of purpose in the 2010s. A 2019 statement from the Business Roundtable, signed by 181 chief executives, redefined the purpose of a corporation to include commitments to employees, communities, and the environment, not only shareholders.4

The original Latin word described something placed in front of you. The modern usage places it inside you, as though it were always there, waiting to be found.

In Japanese, the word ikigai describes a reason for being, but carries no implication that this reason must come from work. In French, raison d'être translates literally as reason for being, without the professional connotation that purpose has acquired in English-language business culture.