PREPOSSESSION • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Prepossession

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noun

Prepossession n.

Preoccupation; prior possession.

Preoccupation of the mind by an opinion, or impression, already formed; preconceived opinion; previous impression; bias; generally, but not always, used in a favorable sense; as, the prepossessions of childhood. "The prejudices and prepossessions of the country."

Synonyms: Bent; bias; inclination; preoccupancy; prejudgment. See Bent.

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Etymology of 'Prepossession'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Prepossession" Quotes from Famous Books

... in a Country where the Religion of Suesi is directed by the Pepa, who stiles himself the Sovereign Arbitrator of it, had imbibed a strong Prepossession for what in the Kingdom of the Kofirans is called Bigotry, or misplaced Devotion. The Customs and religious Notions of this Nation, which were more free and rational than in the Country of this Princess, had been a Constraint upon her Inclination, ...

— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon

... men are sometimes fatally infected with this disease, either through unhappy prepossession, or some of the other causes above-mentioned, yet I am unwilling to believe that there is in nature so monstrously incongruous a being as a female infidel. The least reflection on the temper, the character, and the education of women, makes the mind revolt with horror ...

— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin

... against me;—not his arguments in themselves, which I shall easily crumble into dust, but the bias of the court. It is the state of the atmosphere; it is the vibration all around which will more or less echo his assertion of my dishonesty; it is that prepossession against me, which takes it for granted that, when my reasoning is convincing it is only ingenious, and that when my statements are unanswerable, there is always something put out of sight or hidden in my sleeve; it is that plausible, but cruel conclusion to which men are so apt to jump, ...

— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... kingdom. In the matter of fact, for the greater part, these authors appear to be in the right; perhaps not always: but if the lawyers mistake in some particulars, it proves my position still the more strongly; because it demonstrates the powerful prepossession towards antiquity with which the minds of all our lawyers and legislators, and of all the people whom they wish to influence, have been always filled, and the stationary policy of this kingdom in considering their most sacred rights and franchises ...

— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... proper age, as it was expressed in the following letter to the writer of these pages, will be satisfactory to such parents as are yet unconvinced of the efficacy of vaccination; and his opinion is the more valuable, because it was given at a time when there was neither prejudice nor prepossession on the subject. ...

— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

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