prepossession
Americannoun
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the state of being prepossessed.
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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
Derived 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.
Among the methods of conciliation and prepossession, humour and drollery are particularly mentioned.
From History of Roman Literature from its Earliest Period to the Augustan Age. Volume II by Dunlop, John
They were soon quite at home on the subject of education, and Dr. Halford added no little to the prepossession he had created by listening to her anxieties respecting Freddy's health with courteous interest.
From Englefield Grange or Mary Armstrong's Troubles by Paull, H. B.
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)
That opinion was then, as now, the avowed result of a theoretical prepossession; and this prepossession, as the above quotations sufficiently show, was expressly repudiated by Darwin.
From Darwin, and After Darwin, Volume 2 Post-Darwinian Questions: Heredity and Utility by Romanes, George John
It is that these, clamoring for their own prepossession, deny us ours!
From The Unpopular Review, Number 19 July-December 1918 by Various
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.
