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tendency
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
tendency
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
suicidal tendencies (=behaviour that showed she wanted to kill herself)
▪ For many years before treatment, Clare had suicidal tendencies .
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
aggressive
▪ More than half of those worst affected had aggressive and anti-social tendencies.
▪ In Phoenix any aggressive tendencies were dampened by the location of these agencies within a government structure that frowned on federal aid.
▪ The Asiaticus does not appear to have any aggressive tendencies and appears to be equally active during the day and night.
criminal
▪ Learning theories have been much more important in positivist theorising about the acquisition of criminal tendencies.
general
▪ Some highly general tendencies, which will necessarily be subject to subsequent refinement and caution, can serve to represent the scene.
▪ The general tendency among long-time employees, said the study, is not to think of leaving.
▪ The reorganisation of local government in 1974 was another event which undoubtedly accentuated the general tendency for local expenditure to grow.
▪ Less obvious is Bourdieu s evidence that education fosters a general tendency towards the use of high culture.
▪ First, like all others, it represents general tendencies rather than exact categories.
▪ A general tendency towards making artillery lighter and more mobile can also be seen in the later decades of the century.
▪ These moves have had little effect on psychology's general tendency to represent sexuality simply as heterosexuality.
▪ But they were much more readily negotiable through association, which was already a basic general tendency in most other social activities.
great
▪ Cemeteries show a greater tendency towards large collective tombs.
▪ Low motor tone involves greater flexor tendencies.
▪ In 1980 it showed the greatest tendency to revitalise and performed averagely on a decline in deprivation index.
▪ The more volatile component is the one whose molecules have a greater tendency to escape into the vapour phase.
▪ They also have a greater tendency to rate themselves as ambitious, highly sexed, strong-willed and well endowed.
▪ Women from the higher classes have a greater tendency to stay single.
▪ Overall, they found a greater tendency to underpricing.
▪ Some people have a greater inherited tendency to depression than others.
growing
▪ There is a growing tendency for councils to give committees complete power to act on behalf of the council.
▪ Nowadays, there is a growing tendency to include the physical states of the reactants and products in equations.
▪ It was this growing tendency after 1983 which almost brought the government to its knees.
▪ It so happens that another growing tendency in contemporary thinking has been undermining the whole approach which leads to it.
▪ There was also a growing tendency to retain a certain amount of booty for personal use.
increasing
▪ By the way, I notice an increasing tendency for her critics to psychoanalyse Mrs Thatcher.
▪ In general, therefore, it constrains the increasing tendency for usefulness to mean more and more information.
▪ In business organizations the increasing tendency has been to use the basic financial statements as a measure of performance.
▪ Hence the increasing tendency for landlords to develop share-cropping tenancies to replace the crops they themselves found it more difficult to produce.
▪ Three arguments are often raised to counter the increasing tendency towards in-depth work.
▪ Fungicides have still got to be used, but there is an increasing tendency to use organic fertilisers.
▪ This concentration of the market also came about because of the increasing tendency of the rate of profit to decline.
natural
▪ The natural tendency is to try harder with the project that has gone some distance.
▪ Each one exaggerates her natural tendency under stress.
▪ I have already mentioned that right-handed pilots seem to have a natural tendency to turn left.
▪ Your goal is to understand these natural tendencies and use your understanding to help her find better ways to cope.
▪ Mary's natural tendency to fly into a temper probably did not increase their chances very much.
▪ The goal with the Louisas of the world is to help them learn how to go against their natural tendency.
▪ Younger people have a natural tendency to believe that the science they practise has been extant for the whole of time.
▪ There is a natural physical tendency to avoid activities that our nervous system tells us are difficult.
strong
▪ Smokey, warm and strong with a tendency to linger.
▪ Sodium has a strong tendency to lose an electron and become the positively charged ion Na.
▪ There's a strong suicidal tendency.
▪ They thus exhibit a strong tendency to drag their feet as doomsday draws nearer.
▪ There is a very strong tendency to take literally what needs imaginative interpretation.
▪ Literate societies have a strong tendency to take writing as the norm of language.
▪ Yet throughout her period of office there has been a strong authoritarian tendency.
suicidal
▪ Its sedative effects were valued, but sometimes progressed to pathological depression with suicidal tendencies, so its use was limited.
▪ The rumbling row with the unions over ending the block vote is a classic example of its suicidal tendencies.
▪ There's a strong suicidal tendency.
▪ But what about the apparently bizarre link with an increased suicidal tendency?
▪ Through a series of flashbacks, Judith's past is gradually explored, and you begin to take her suicidal tendencies seriously.
■ VERB
increase
▪ On the other hand the very same development increases their tendency to close their eyes to the future.
▪ Law students tend to become more concerned with matters of proper procedure and exhibit an increased tendency to reason by analogy.
▪ There is an increasing tendency to give more and more tests.
show
▪ Cemeteries show a greater tendency towards large collective tombs.
▪ The record shows a tendency to make a couple of kinds of particularly costly mistakes.
▪ What research has shown is that these tendencies to behave in certain ways are deeply embedded in past experiences.
▪ Our awareness of the euphemism is shown by our tendency to laugh at what we regard as false pretension.
▪ In 1980 it showed the greatest tendency to revitalise and performed averagely on a decline in deprivation index.
▪ The following case reports show the tendency to doubt the diagnosis and over investigate such patients.
▪ The parliamentarians hit back by accusing Mr Obasanjo of overstepping his powers and showing dictatorial tendencies.
▪ When it comes to dressing, she shows chameleon-like tendencies.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Can you discern an editorial leaning or tendency in the work they accept?
▪ Class Status derives from the tendency of people to accord positive and negative values to human attributes and to distribute respect accordingly.
▪ Her speech is badly slurred, and the tendency is to dismiss her as a drunk or a druggie.
▪ It's then that you realise he keeps his psychotic tendencies hidden, only to be let out onstage.
▪ Second, there is the tendency to hasten all those final writing chores, and this is a mistake.
▪ The arrow represents a plausible evolutionary tendency of adaptability.
▪ There is a tendency for illnesses to become more prolonged, less intense and for the recovery to be slower.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Tendency

Tendency \Tend"en*cy\, n.; pl. Tendencies. [L. tendents, -entis, p. pr. of tendere: cf. F. tendance. See Tend to move.] Direction or course toward any place, object, effect, or result; drift; causal or efficient influence to bring about an effect or result.

Writings of this kind, if conducted with candor, have a more particular tendency to the good of their country.
--Addison.

In every experimental science, there is a tendency toward perfection.
--Macaulay.

Syn: Disposition; inclination; proneness; drift; scope; aim.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
tendency

1620s, from Medieval Latin tendentia "inclination, leaning," from Latin tendens, present participle of tendere "to stretch, extend, aim" (see tenet). Earlier in same sense was tendaunce (mid-15c.), from Old French tendance.

Wiktionary
tendency

n. 1 A likelihood of behaving in a particular way or going in a particular direction; a tending toward. 2 (cx politics English) An organised unit or faction within a larger political organisation.

Related phrases:
WordNet
tendency

  1. n. an attitude of mind especially one that favors one alternative over others; "he had an inclination to give up too easily"; "a tendency to be too strict" [syn: inclination, disposition]

  2. an inclination to do something; "he felt leanings toward frivolity" [syn: leaning, propensity]

  3. a characteristic likelihood of or natural disposition toward a certain condition or character or effect; "the alkaline inclination of the local waters"; "fabric with a tendency to shrink" [syn: inclination]

  4. a general direction in which something tends to move; "the shoreward tendency of the current"; "the trend of the stock market" [syn: trend]

Wikipedia
Tendency

Tendency or tendencies may refer to:

  • Bleeding tendency, an unusual susceptibility to bleeding
  • Central tendency, a central or typical value for a probability distribution
  • Multi-tendency, a type of political organization structure
  • Seasonal tendencies, a qualities of economic phenomena that appear to be related to the calendar
  • Suicidal Tendencies, a thrash metal band
    • Suicidal Tendencies (album), the band's eponymous debut album
  • "Tendencies", a song by Hollywood Undead on the 2011 album American Tragedy
  • Tendency film, a name given to socially conscious, left-leaning films produced in Japan during the 1920s and 1930s
Related phrases:

Usage examples of "tendency".

Like all other forms of drug addiction, the tendency is to have to light up more often, which merely perpetuates the process.

It is sometimes administered in scarlet and typhus fevers, and in all diseases in which there is a tendency to putrescence.

But remember that when the ship is under acceleration, there will be a tendency to favor the aftward direction due to deflection.

He had a tendency to jumble one topic in with another as things occurred to him, and a good deal of it was profane, but Alec managed to sift out enough to set his mind at rest by the time they drew alongside the sleek hull of the Grampus.

If anonymity does fuel the tendency to mouth off, then one preventative strategy would be to decrease anonymity.

Felicite acquired from her experience of provincial life, an understanding of money, and that strong tendency to administrative wisdom which enables the provinces to hold their own under the ascensional movement of capital towards Paris.

I feel, however, that in view of the expansion and the growing importance of the administrative sphere of the Cause, the general sentiments and tendencies prevailing among the friends, and the signs of increasing interdependence among the National Spiritual Assemblies throughout the world, the assembled accredited representatives of the American believers should exercise not only the vital and responsible right of electing the National Assembly, but should also fulfill the functions of an enlightened, consultative and cooperative body that will enrich the experience, enhance the prestige, support the authority, and assist the deliberations of the National Spiritual Assembly.

Despite their tendency to underplay their status by not wearing their asterisk, most wizards get annoyed with anyone who pretends to be a wizard.

Romania and Anatolia, so often torn asunder by private ambition, were animated by a strong and invincible tendency of cohesion.

I complained about his tendency to weigh his story down with vast wads of bafflegab and infodump and strain for vaguely poetic sound bites.

Mrs Biggs was even more alarming and seemed to indicate schizophrenia with sadomasochistic tendencies.

Associated with this size increase is the tendency to be bipedal rather than quadrupedal.

He was evidently proud of his unfaltering prowess and, when met with encouragement, waxed gleeful and openly suggestive on the subject of his abilities, especially when a young, winsome maid caught his eye and he gave himself over to his boastful tendencies.

At that moment the Boban tendency wanted to lay all its cards on the table and openly stand out against Bosnian independence -- and thus in favour of dividing the country-but had to hold back because Croatia was in an exceedingly delicate situation.

Bradshaw expected naturally to see a youth of imperfect constitution, and cachectic or dyspeptic tendencies, who was in training to furnish one of those biographies beginning with the statement that, from his infancy, the subject of it showed no inclination for boyish amusements, and so on, until he dies out, for the simple reason that there was not enough of him to live.