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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
predilection
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ He is a grammarian, a swordsman, a musician with a predilection for the fugue.
▪ In fact, there seems to be a general predilection of benign strictures for the left side of the colon.
▪ Lacking the certainty that arises from inner, mystic experience, we have a predilection to replace genuine knowledge with dogma.
▪ Petitioner certainly was not attempting to conceal or withhold from the Committee his own past political associations, predilections, and preferences.
▪ So the predilections of beavers centuries ago may well have determined the places where human beings have their towns today.
▪ Spark has always had the facility to be silkily suave as she goes about examining our predilection for worshipping false gods.
▪ This supposition becomes more likely in light of Hamann's predilection for parables as the most appropriate genre for telling the truth.
▪ Those who knew of his predilections often wondered why he had not become a botanist, an entomologist, a biologist.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Predilection

Predilection \Pre`di*lec"tion\, n. [Pref. pre- + L. dilectus, p. p. diligere to prefer: cf. F. pr['e]dilection. See Diligent.] A previous liking; a prepossession of mind in favor of something; predisposition to choose or like; partiality.
--Burke.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
predilection

1742, from French prédilection (16c.), noun of action from Medieval Latin praedilectus, past participle of prediligere "prefer before others," from Latin prae- "before" (see pre-) + diligere "choose, love" (see diligent).

Wiktionary
predilection

n. Condition of favoring or like; tendency towards; proclivity; predisposition.

WordNet
predilection
  1. n. a predisposition in favor of something; "a predilection for expensive cars"; "his sexual preferences"; "showed a Marxist orientation" [syn: preference, orientation]

  2. a strong liking; "my own preference is for good literature"; "the Irish have a penchant for blarney" [syn: preference, penchant, taste]

Usage examples of "predilection".

Samuel Parris: a concern for the afflicted, a predilection to act deliberately, and a desire to determine the truth.

Her prime weaknesses, aside from the habit of prosaic disillusionment, are a tendency toward erroneous geography and history and a fatal predilection for bestrewing her novels with insipid little poems, attributed to one or another of the characters.

You are right about the undead predilection for noms de plume, alter egos, secret identities, anagrams, and palindromes and acrostics.

It was well understood that the connection of the noble viscount with the whig government was not from any partizan predilections, but from approval of their foreign policy, and from a patriotic desire to maintain the honour and credit of the country in its relation to other states, by devoting his diplomatic talent and experience to the conduct of the foreign office.

He was a hearty laugher, a hard drinker, a common and peculiar failing of the age, a great respecter of the law, as was meet in one so situated, and a bachelor of sixty-eight, a time of life that, by referring his education to a period more remote by half a century, than that in which the incidents of our legend took place, was not at all in favor of any very romantic predilection in behalf of the rest of the human race.

In this region theist and atheist must alike consent to forego all their individual predilections, and, after regarding the subject as it were in the abstract and by the light of pure logic alone, finally come to an agreement as to the transcendental probability of the question before them.

His predilection for the stockingcap of the Alemannic peasant betokened his attachment to the simple life and the soil of his native Baden.

These were the patients whose own maladies or characterological predilections had left them so self-involved that they were either unable or unwilling to register the Band-Aid that was on my face, or the jaw that was swollen from my just completed root canal, or the cherry red cast that was holding my right arm at an impossibly inconvenient angle.

Jack, fondling the flat-brimmed cowpuncher model of affectionate predilection.

No scholar and a sparing attendant at lectures, he had nevertheless revealed a certain predilection for the subjects which Mr Lammas professed, had won a prize for debate in the Logic class, and in Rhetoric had shown a gift for declamation and a high-coloured taste in English style.

Far from being a quarrel-maker, he was peaceful to the point of Quakerish predilection.

Annette a virgin taste to form would be better than to have the silly, half-baked predilections of the English middle-class to deal with.

He had the neverfailing predilection for showy switch-tailed horses that step high, and sidle about, and act as if they were going to do something fearful the next minute, in the face of awed and admiring multitudes gathered at mighty musters or imposing cattle-shows.

But Randolph had never questioned the sexual predilections of his son or Shane.

Leaving aside the preconceived ideas of most historians and their pronounced predilection for the dramatic aspects of history, we see that the very documents they habitually peruse are such as to exaggerate the part of human life given to struggles and to underrate its peaceful moods.