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penchant

UK/ˈpɒnʃɒn/US/ˈpɛnt͡ʃənt/
nounC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,430 of 15,258leans written

A penchant is a strong liking for something. A penchant for detail, a penchant for gambling, his penchant for hats.

It takes for, and it is usually said with a raised eyebrow: a penchant is a taste somebody indulges rather than merely has. It keeps its French sound, with a nasal ending, and the French verb behind it means to lean.

Definitions of penchant

  1. 1nounpenchantA strong liking for something.C1

    “He has a penchant for expensive Italian shoes.”

penchant is a liking.

Where it comes from

French penchant is the present participle of pencher, to lean or tilt.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *(s)pend-

  2. Latin

    pendere — to hang

  3. Old French

    pengier — to tilt, be out of line

  4. French

    penchant

  5. English, today

    penchant

Built from

  • pencher · French — to tilt, to lean

French penchant, present participle of pencher (“to tilt, to lean”), from Middle French -, from Old French pengier (“to tilt, be out of line”), from Vulgar Latin - *pendicāre, a derivative of Latin pendere (“to hang”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

penchant in the wild

  • Smith... concerning my penchant for wandering over the Galaxy.

    Earth Is Room Enough

  • Alphonse and Gaston is an American comic strip by Frederick Burr Opper, featuring a bumbling pair of Frenchmen with a penchant for politeness.

    Alphonse and Gaston

  • Firebrand may refer to: A person with a penchant for militancy in speech and/or action A burning torch.

    Firebrand

  • Although the book was written in the late 1960s, the book stays true to Cleary's penchant for making the stories relevant regardless of the time period.

    Mitch and Amy

  • Hotte Paksha Rangaswamy was a political leader from the Indian state of Karnataka, who had a penchant for contesting elections.

    Hotte Paksha Rangaswamy

1 / 2

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the pendere family

ponderpenchant

penchant — used about once every 6,207 pages · #10,430 · point at the bar for the others