Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Predominant \Pre*dom"i*nant\, a. [Cf. F. pr['e]dominant. See Predominante.] Having the ascendency over others; superior in strength, influence, or authority; prevailing; as, a predominant color; predominant excellence.
Those help . . . were predominant in the king's mind.
--Bacon.
Foul subordination is predominant.
--Shak.
Syn: Prevalent; superior; prevailing; ascendant; ruling; reigning; controlling; overruling.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
a. 1 common or widespread; prevalent 2 significant or important; dominant n. (context music English) A subdominant.
WordNet
adj. most frequent or common; "prevailing winds" [syn: prevailing]
having superior power and influence; "the predominant mood among policy-makers is optimism" [syn: overriding, paramount, predominate, preponderant, preponderating]
Usage examples of "predominant".
Over all these causes of Change I am convinced that the accumulative action of Selection, whether applied methodically and more quickly, or unconsciously and more slowly, but more efficiently, is by far the predominant Power.
The predominant color was a delicate, pearlized pink, even to the silk wallpaper and the enormous crystal chandelier.
Everybody pitied me, or pretended to do so, for selfishness is the predominant passion of gamesters.
Predominant over all was the stately figure of Hassan of Aleppo, that benignant, remorseless being, that terrible guardian of the holy relic who directed the murderous operations.
As she saw the last time, the lines seemed especially predominant near his chin, cheeks, nose, and forehead areas, running mostly vertical on his forehead, diagonally and horizontally on his nose, vertically and diagonally on his chin and cheekbones, with a strange sort of oval or circular pattern around his eyes.
Later, with the Hindu shift toward pacifism and nonviolence, the brahmin, or priestly caste, became predominant, with kshatriyas shifting into the second-highest position from around the fifth century A.
It is the body, as a rule, which flourishes exceedingly, which draws everything to itself, which usurps the predominant place and lives repulsively emancipated from the soul.
In the last years of the century, with the growth of Kievan influence in Muscovy, the rhymed school drama became predominant, but under Peter the Great the secular prose play translated from the German again took the upper hand.
The problem is, however, that its other statements on the use of force to improve the world are so alien to predominant European and other thinking that, if implemented, they would make such multilateralism very difficult.
It is in this sublime Gothic architecture of his work, in which the boundless range, the infinite variety, the, at first sight, incongruous gorgeousness of the separate parts, nevertheless are all subordinate to one main and predominant idea, that Gibbon is unrivalled.
In Dickens, in Carlyle, even in Ruskin, the Shandean element is often present and not rarely predominant.
Old Empire the Vulcanian scientists had a predominant interest in the Sun.
He then went to war with the pashas of Arta, of Delvino, and of Ocrida, whom he subdued, together with that of Triccala, and established a predominant influence over the agas of Thessaly.
Up and down the trench the predominant sound was of the harsh breathing of the defenders intermixed with the excited whisperings of the wraithsinterspersed occasionally with an agonised cry as a man fell victim to the hungry teeth of a Skraeling.
The predominant mood among the Bolsheviks was ultra-left - a refusal to recognise that the revolution was in retreat.