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penchant [ pen -chuh nt; French pahn -shahn ] SHOW IPA
/ ˈpɛn tʃənt; French pɑ̃ˈʃɑ̃ / PHONETIC RESPELLING
📙 Middle School LevelThis shows grade level based on the word's complexity.
noun
a strong inclination, taste, or liking for something: a penchant for outdoor sports.
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QUIZ YOURSELF ON "WAS" VS. "WERE"!
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“Was” is used for the indicative past tense of “to be,” and “were” is only used for the subjunctive past tense.
Origin of penchant 1665–75; <French, noun use of present participle of pencher to incline, lean <Vulgar Latin *pendicāre, derivative of Latin pendēre to hang
Words nearby penchant penannular ,
Penates ,
pen-based ,
pence ,
pencel ,
penchant ,
penché ,
Penchi ,
pencil ,
pencil beam ,
pencil box
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2022
Words related to penchant affection ,
affinity ,
predilection ,
proclivity ,
propensity ,
taste ,
tendency ,
weakness ,
attachment ,
bias ,
disposition ,
druthers ,
inclining ,
itch ,
leaning ,
liking ,
partiality ,
predisposition ,
proneness ,
tilt
How to use penchant in a sentence Douek said that while she can only speculate as to YouTube’s motives, she suspects that its penchant for avoiding headlines is at least partly intentional.
Delaney, a 39-year-old IT consultant, already had a penchant for activism.
Unless you’re a legal expert or have a penchant for nosing through dense legal documents, across not just the EEOC but other relevant regulatory bodies, things can start to get easily tangled.
He was traded to the Atlanta Hawks in 2015, where he struggled early but found his game — and his penchant for 3-point shooting.
They have a penchant for travel far greater than their heterosexual counterparts.
This penchant for medical internationalism goes back to the greatest icon of the revolution, Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
The CIA has a penchant for such hilarious and sometimes depraved schemes.
Reality-show deal aside, Weeks has a penchant for talking about her poverty.
Let this be a warning for rich men who have a penchant for younger women—they can be quite jealous.
Unlike his falsetto and his "cool dad" penchant for fedoras, this rumored affair is just so not cute.
Of refined tastes, including a penchant for blue china, being a thriving bachelor, he was able to gratify them.
Excellent company; a frequenter of the home of Mme. de la Baudraye, where he satisfied his penchant for gaming.
These higher flights from Tootles always moved Pansy, who had a penchant for refined romance.
My landlord had a great penchant , like other Frenchmen of that day, for conversing on the subject of duelling.
Ling Chu on the contrary had a penchant for buses and seemed to enjoy them.
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British Dictionary definitions for penchant
noun
a strong inclination or liking; bent or taste
Word Origin for penchant C17: from French, from pencher to incline, from Latin pendēre to be suspended
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Other Idioms and Phrases with penchant
The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary
Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.