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
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.
Only the force of the prepossession of mathematical atomism in analytic logic can account for its failure to do so.
From Creative Intelligence Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude by Boyd H. Bode
But this prominence is also a natural result of the romanticists' prepossession with passion.
From Tragedy by Ashley H. Thorndike
He should feel inspired with a strong and awful prepossession in its favor.
From The Arena Volume 18, No. 93, August, 1897 by Various
A learning of the mind; propensity or prepossession toward an object or view, not leaving the mind indifferent; bent inclination.
From Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (2nd 100 Pages) by Noah Webster
For its central ideas relate to the remotest ultimates, and its dominant prepossession, the Overman, is, in the final reckoning, the creature of a Utopian fancy.
From Prophets of Dissent : Essays on Maeterlinck, Strindberg, Nietzsche and Tolstoy by Otto Heller
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
