How to use infinitives of purpose - English In A Minute

Hi, I’m Dan from BBC Learning English,

and today I’m going to talk to you about

infinitives of purpose.

English has something called the infinitive of purpose.

We use it to explain why we do something.

'To explain why we do something'

is an infinitive of purpose.

Why do we use it?

Another example is:

I went home to eat.

We make our sentence: I went home,

and then attach a full infinitive verb

- to eat.

This doesn’t work with nouns.

For example:

I went home to food.

To use a noun we use 'for'.

I went home for food.

Finally, we can also use for

to talk about doing something to help someone.

For example:

I made this video for you to learn.

You’re welcome!