penchant
- 01 C1 Advanced
a strong liking for something, especially something that other people might find strange or specific.
a strong or habitual liking for something or a tendency to do something. Often takes the preposition 'for'.
Simple“He has a penchant for expensive watches and owns over twenty of them.”
In context“Despite her professional focus on modern architecture, she retained a lifelong penchant for collecting Victorian landscape paintings.”
UsageUsually follows the pattern 'a penchant for [something]'.
Synonyms
“Meanwhile, on Saturday, the US president raised the volume again by resorting to the kind of AI-generated imagery for which he has shown a penchant .”
“He read widely, in philosophy, history and literature, while maintaining a penchant for classic thrillers.”
Unadapted borrowing from 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 adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.