prepossession
Americannoun
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the state of being prepossessed.
-
a prejudice, especially one in favor of a person or thing.
- Synonyms:
- interest, bias, liking, predilection
noun
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the state or condition of being prepossessed
-
a prejudice or bias, esp a favourable one
Other Word Forms
- prepossessionary adjective
Etymology
Origin of prepossession
First recorded in 1640–50; pre- + possession
Explanation
Prepossession is a prejudice or a preconceived idea about something. You might be accused of prepossession if you decided you were going to dislike your new job before you'd even started working there. When you've got a strong opinion about a subject — or a person — despite having little information or direct experience, that's prepossession. Your prepossession on the subject of cats might make it hard for you to be enthusiastic about your roommate's new kitten, for example. The obsolete verb prepossess originally meant "to get possession of beforehand." By the 1630's, it came to mean "to possess a person beforehand with a feeling or idea," usually in a positive sense.
Vocabulary lists containing prepossession
"Common Sense," Vocabulary from the pamphlet
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Common Sense
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Society and Solitude
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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.
He should feel inspired with a strong and awful prepossession in its favor.
From The Arena Volume 18, No. 93, August, 1897 by Various
I may be foolish to do so--the prepossession may be false--the motives for such belief may be slight; but yet that belief is strong.
From The Gipsy (Vols I & II) A Tale by James, G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford)
We must approach the whole subject of split or duplicated personalities with no prepossession against the possibility of any given arrangement or division of the total mass of consciousness which exists within us.
From Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death by Myers, F. W. H. (Frederic William Henry)
It is organically related to the mystical prepossession of the author's manner of thinking.
From Prophets of Dissent : Essays on Maeterlinck, Strindberg, Nietzsche and Tolstoy by Heller, Otto
My own prepossession is still in favor of Alberti.
From Renaissance in Italy: Italian Literature Part 1 (of 2) by Symonds, John Addington
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.
