Word of the Day
: March 31, 2025penchant
playWhat It Means
Penchant refers to a strong liking for something, or a strong tendency to behave in a certain way. It is usually used with for.
// My penchant for mathematics helped me become an engineer.
penchant in Context
"Sly Lives! is exceptionally strong in its attention to musical detail—even more than Questlove's previous cinematic effort, the Academy Award–winning Summer of Soul, Sly Lives! feels like a film made by a great musician. The film's interviewees offer illuminating ruminations on Sly's vocal arrangements, including his penchant for switching back and forth between unison vocal parts and harmonized ones ..." — Jack Hamilton, Slate, 13 Feb. 2025
Did You Know?
English has multiple p-words that imply a strong instinct or liking for something, including propensity and proclivity, but to keep things precise, penchant is the proper word for implying a pronounced, persistent taste in a person ("a penchant for pretty pendants") or a predominant predilection for performing particular actions ("a penchant for petting penguins"). Penchant traces back all the way to the Latin verb pendere, meaning "to weigh," but is more immediately preceded in English by the French word penchant, from the present participle of pencher, meaning "to incline."
Test Your Vocabulary with M-W Quizzes
Word Family Quiz
What 7-letter word that comes from the Latin pendere refers to a fixed sum of money paid under given conditions to a person following retirement from service or to surviving dependents?
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