Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- n. A definite liking; a strong inclination. See Synonyms at predilection.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. taste, liking, or inclination (for)
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- n. Inclination; decided taste; bias.
- n. A game like bézique, or, in the game, any queen and jack of different suits held together.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Strong inclination; decided taste; liking; bias.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- n. a strong liking
Etymologies
Examples
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His penchant is for the gargantuan – auto companies, school violence, capitalism, health care.
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That agents of the state of Israel are behind much if not all of the "Hamas rockets" is a reasonable conclusion and backed up by the Israeli governments long term penchant for fabricating Muslim terrorism.
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And he fears updating the Copyright Act will blow up because of the Tory's short-term penchant for slogans and electioneering.
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The cable is embarrassing for Mr. King, whose r ole in setting the country ' s interest rate is supposed to be apolitical and has fed into mounting criticism of the central banker for what has been described as his penchant for exerting political pressure.
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FAIR called his penchant for attacking Muslim countries "an O'Reilly trademark", and "his disregard for Muslim civilians is matched by the anti-Muslim sentiments he frequently expresses on both his nationally syndicated radio show, the Radio Factor," reaching 3.5 million listeners, and his top-rated FNC show.
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And might this be related to what others have termed our penchant for reliance on 'basic-level categories.'
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We're up here knocking about a little, partly to hunt, but mostly because I've a penchant, that is, a weakness for exploring out-of-the-way places.
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Karamargin, a spokesman for Ms. Giffords, called her penchant for frugality.
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"The color of the letters seems very Howard Hughes," she said, referring to his penchant for sultry actresses like Ava Gardner and Rita Hayworth.
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Writer Lionel Shriver writers recalls a penchant for writing long, febrile short stories and supporting unpopular political positions.
Telegraph.co.uk: news, business, sport, the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Sunday Telegraph
grandpa27 commented on the word penchant
penchant has been misspelled at least three ways - pencient, penchent and penchint. Your speller did not pick up any misspellings. However, in my comment the second 2 were corrected and it took me sometime to have the misspelled words printed.
November 9, 2013
arby commented on the word penchant
1672, from Fr. penchant, properly the prp. of O.Fr. pencher "to incline," from V.L. *pendicare, a frequentative formed from L. pendere "to hang" (see pendant).
October 18, 2007