Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Design

Design (?; 277) , transitive verb

[French désigner to designate, compare French dessiner to draw, dessin drawing, dessein a plan or scheme; all, ultimately, from Latin designare to designate; de- + signare to mark, mark out, signum mark, sign. See Sign, and compare Design, n., Designate.]

1.
To draw preliminary outline or main features of; to sketch for a pattern or model; to delineate; to trace out; to draw. — Dryden
2.
To mark out and exhibit; to designate; to indicate; to show; to point out; to appoint.
We shall see Justice design the victor's chivalry. — Shakespeare
Meet me to-morrow where the master And this fraternity shall design. — Beau. & Fl
3.
To create or produce, as a work of art; to form a plan or scheme of; to form in idea; to invent; to project; to lay out in the mind; as, a man designs an essay, a poem, a statue, or a cathedral.
4.
To intend or purpose; -- usually with for before the remote object, but sometimes with to.
Ask of politicians the end for which laws were originally designed. — Burke
He was designed to the study of the law. — Dryden

Design , intransitive verb

To form a design or designs; to plan.
Collocations (1)
Design for , to intend to go to. [Obsolete] From this city she designed for Collin [Cologne]. — Evelyn

Design , noun

[Compare dessein, dessin.]

1.
A preliminary sketch; an outline or pattern of the main features of something to be executed, as of a picture, a building, or a decoration; a delineation; a plan.
2.
A plan or scheme formed in the mind of something to be done; preliminary conception; idea intended to be expressed in a visible form or carried into action; intention; purpose; -- often used in a bad sense for evil intention or purpose; scheme; plot.
The vast design and purpose of the King. — Tennyson
The leaders of that assembly who withstood the designs of a besotted woman. — Hallam
A... settled design upon another man's life. — Locke
How little he could guess the secret designs of the court! — Macaulay
3.
Specifically, intention or purpose as revealed or inferred from the adaptation of means to an end; as, the argument from design.
4.
The realization of an inventive or decorative plan; esp., a work of decorative art considered as a new creation; conception or plan shown in completed work; as, this carved panel is a fine design, or of a fine design.
5.
(Music) The invention and conduct of the subject; the disposition of every part, and the general order of the whole.
Is he a prudent man... that lays designs only for a day, without any prospect to the remaining part of his life? — Tillotson
I wish others the same intention, and greater successes. — Sir W. Temple
It is the purpose that makes strong the vow. — Shakespeare
Collocations (2)
Arts of design , those into which the designing of artistic forms and figures enters as a principal part, as architecture, painting, engraving, sculpture.
School of design , one in which are taught the invention and delineation of artistic or decorative figures, patterns, and the like.