bias
noun
a particular tendency, trend, inclination, feeling, or opinion, especially one that is preconceived or unreasoned.
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bias
1 American
[bahy-uhs]
/ ˈbaɪ əs /
noun
-
biases
plural
-
a particular tendency, trend, inclination, feeling, or opinion, especially one that is preconceived or unreasoned.
The hiring manager was found to have shown bias against job applicants who wore less expensive clothing.
The magazine’s bias is toward art rather than photography.
We need to set aside our strong bias in favor of the idea and evaluate it logically.
- Synonyms:
- leaning, bent, proclivity, partiality, predilection, preconception, predisposition
- Antonyms:
- impartiality
-
unreasonably hostile feelings or opinions about a social group; prejudice.
The show’s host has faced accusations of racial bias.
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an oblique or diagonal line of direction, especially across a woven fabric.
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Statistics. a systematic as opposed to random distortion of a statistic as a result of sampling procedure.
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Electronics. the application of a steady voltage or current to an active device, such as a diode or transistor, to produce a desired mode of operation.
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a high-frequency alternating current applied to the recording head of a tape recorder during recording in order to reduce distortion.
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Lawn Bowling.
-
a slight bulge or greater weight on one side of the ball or bowl.
-
the curved course made by such a ball when rolled.
-
adjective
adverb
verb (used with object)
-
biases,
present (3rd person singular)
-
biased,
past participle, past
-
biassed,
past participle, past (especially British)
-
biasing,
present participle
-
biassing
present participle (especially British)
-
to cause to hold or exhibit a particular bias; to influence, especially unfairly.
The defendant gave a tearful plea designed to bias the jury.
The survey was heavily biased toward highly educated people.
- Synonyms:
- bend, predispose, dispose, incline
-
Electronics. to apply a steady voltage or current to (the input of an active device).
idioms
Bias
2
American
[bahy-uhs]
/ ˈbaɪ əs /
noun
bias
British
/ ˈbaɪəs /
noun
-
mental tendency or inclination, esp an irrational preference or prejudice
-
a diagonal line or cut across the weave of a fabric
-
electronics the voltage applied to an electronic device or system to establish suitable working conditions
-
bowls
-
a bulge or weight inside one side of a bowl
-
the curved course of such a bowl on the green
-
-
statistics
-
an extraneous latent influence on, unrecognized conflated variable in, or selectivity in a sample which influences its distribution and so renders it unable to reflect the desired population parameters
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if T is an estimator of the parameter θ , the expected value of ( T–θ )
-
-
an inaudible high-frequency signal used to improve the quality of a tape recording
adjective
adverb
verb
Usage
Plural word for bias The plural form of bias is biases, pronounced [ bahy-uhs-eez ] or [ bahy-uhs-ehz ]. The plurals of several other singular words that end in -s are also formed this way, including alias/aliases, moss/mosses, and lens/lenses. However, bias is often used as a mass noun, meaning that in some instances bias may be used as either a singular or a plural form. The plural form biasses is obsolete and should be avoided.
Synonym Usage
Bias, prejudice mean a strong inclination of the mind or a preconceived opinion about something or someone. A bias may be favorable or unfavorable: bias in favor of or against an idea. Prejudice implies a preformed judgment even more unreasoning than bias, and usually implies an unfavorable opinion: prejudice against people of another religion.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
biassimple
-
biasessimple
-
have biasedperfect
-
have biassedperfect
-
has biasedperfect
-
has biassedperfect
-
am biasingprogressive
-
am biassingprogressive
-
are biasingprogressive
-
are biassingprogressive
-
is biasingprogressive
-
is biassingprogressive
-
have been biasingperfect progressive
-
have been biassingperfect progressive
-
has been biasingperfect progressive
-
has been biassingperfect progressive
Past
-
biasedsimple
-
biassedsimple
-
had biasedperfect
-
had biassedperfect
-
was biasingprogressive
-
was biassingprogressive
-
were biasingprogressive
-
were biassingprogressive
-
had been biasingperfect progressive
-
had been biassingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of bias
First recorded in 1520–30; from Middle French biais “obliqueness,” from Old Provençal, probably from Vulgar Latin (e)bigassius (unrecorded), from Greek epikársios “oblique,” from epi- epi- + -karsios “oblique”; alternatively, from Vulgar Latin biaxius (unrecorded) “having two axes” ( see bi-, axis)
Explanation
Use the noun bias to mean a preference for one thing over another, especially an unfair one. Some biases are completely innocent: "I have a bias toward French wines." But most often, bias is used to describe unfair prejudices: "The authorities investigated a case involving bias against Latinos." It is also a verb meaning "to show prejudice for or against," as in "They claimed the tests were biased against women." (In British English, it takes an extra S in the forms biassed and biassing.) The word goes back at least to Old Provençal, a former language of southern France, in association with the sport of lawn bowling, where it referred to the tendency of a ball to roll in one direction or the other.
Vocabulary lists containing bias
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Researchers additionally performed sensitivity analyses to assess attrition bias.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 16, 2026
In June the Fed had an easy decision to make: remove the sentence suggesting a bias to ease and get a unanimous vote.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026
Under former Fed Chair Jerome Powell, for instance, bond markets tended to be more reactive to his press conferences rather than the policy bias from statements by the Federal Open Market Committee.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 11, 2026
“We’ve got to allow ourselves to build outwards, not just upwards, and we’ve got to end the bias against single family homes,” Hilton said at a March forum hosted by the California Assn. of Realtors.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 10, 2026
He had to travel northward with a bias to the east, and he would be in Mossville sooner or later—with luck, in less than a day.
From "Abel's Island" by William Steig
Members of UCLA’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias, which in a 2024 report found “broad-based perceptions of antisemitic and anti-Israeli bias on campus,” did not sign.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 17, 2026
Bias is for bulls to buy dips above $4,800/oz and attempt an advance toward $5,000/oz in the near term.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 18, 2026
The Bias case raised questions about the extent to which agents can control clients’ spending sprees.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 21, 2026
That is the finding of a new research study, “Conflicting News, Negativity Bias, and Short-Term Return Predictability.”
From MarketWatch ● Dec. 24, 2025
I read the report of Bias Roca, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, about their years as an illegal organization during the Batista regime.
From "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela
But all inevitably carry their own biases, and none have the intimate understanding, sustained commitment or enduring responsibility that parents have for their children.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026
“Even if they have some of these biases, they recognize that they shouldn’t be telling the experimenter about those biases,” he explains.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 13, 2026
But after an investor has begun to participate in the markets, he or she may have developed biases that are hard to overcome.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 8, 2026
One of its core biases is that value stocks outperform growth stocks, which of course they haven’t for over a decade.
From Barron's ● Jun. 18, 2026
The kinds of biases we’re talking about here aren’t so obvious that it’s easy to identify a solution.
From "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell
The experts I spoke with offered guidance on how to tell if your therapist is giving biased advice and what to do about it.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 22, 2026
He was freed after his conviction was overturned on procedural grounds, with the presiding judge also later ruled to have been biased.
From Barron's ● Aug. 5, 2026
“They have set up a system where it’s virtually impossible to sustain a biased policing complaint against an officer,” she said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 24, 2026
He put this partially down to the first two weeks of the period tending to correlate with Wall Street two-year projections – which are biased lower.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 20, 2026
Shouldn’t the focus be on improving ourselves, rather than challenging a biased system?
From "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander
These gentlemen know the river well enough as it now is, and are not biassed by old memories of what it once was but is no longer.
From Boating by W. B. Woodgate
Of course, one particular woman's opinion of her may very likely be biassed.
From The Tree of Knowledge A Novel by Mrs. Baillie Reynolds
I venture to think that no painter, however modern, and no critic, however biassed, could stand in front of that little portrait head in the Tate Gallery and honestly refrain from admiration and respect.
From John Pettie, R.A., H.R.S.A. Sixteen examples in colour of the artist's work by Martin Hardie
Then she returned to England, virulent against her brother William, 'whose kindness to her,' says Horace Walpole, no biassed witness, 'has been excessive.
From Lord Chatham His Early Life and Connections by Archibald Phillip Primrose Rosebery
My Lewis always says that my figure is exactly right, but I dare say he's biassed.
From The War-Workers by E.M. Delafield
"If this person's goal, whether explicit or implicit, was in fact to understand the overall landscape of movies in this country, the algorithmic recommendation ends up seriously biasing one's understanding," the authors wrote.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 25, 2025
Bullard said it's not just inflation biasing the Fed toward more action.
From Reuters ● Sep. 14, 2023
Generated text can be watermarked by secretly tagging a subset of words and then biasing the selection of a word to be a synonymous tagged word.
From Salon ● Apr. 6, 2023
That could cause the team to miss thousands of infections that caused few or no symptoms, potentially biasing the results.
From Science Magazine ● Jan. 19, 2023
The doctor sprang from his chair and with eyes biasing and fists tightly clenched, stood over the captain.
From Tides of Barnegat by Francis Hopkinson Smith
But the truth is that, if we set aside matters of trivial import, the enormous majority of human judgments are those into which the biassing power off likes and dislikes more or less largely enters.
From The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 6 (of 12) Dresden Edition?Discussions by Robert Green Ingersoll
However, this is beside the question; and I want to avoid biassing your decision in any way.
From Afloat at Last A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea by William Heysham Overend
He did not," he said, "state the impression upon his own mind with the purpose of biassing theirs.
From The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Volume 1 by Sir Walter Scott
Still the attitude created by the Tubingen theory largely persists as a biassing element in much that is written about Acts.
From The Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia Volume 1 of 28 by Project Gutenberg
Even if he was going to revise his views, was it right, was it candid, was it loyal to the truth, that he should revise them under the biassing influence of Meenie's eyes?
From Strange Stories by Grant Allen
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
