0 something that you do because it will help you to achieve something else: --
I didn't particularly like the job - it was just a means to an end.
Thus redecorating becomes not a whimsical project, not an end in itself, but a means to an end, for a middle-class woman's identity depends upon her maintaining a proper drawing-room.
The vote was not an end in itself but a means to an end for many of the feminists of the late nineteenth century.
It is always a means to an end.
Social policy was thus a means to an end, not an end in itself.
Pots are often used as a means to an end by archaeologists.
It was no more than a means to an end.
They are only a means to an end.
From the point of view of the federal government, this volunteer work is a means to an end, not an activity in its own right.
