Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A characteristic likelihood.
- noun A predisposition to think, act, or proceed in a particular way.
- noun A characteristic pattern or point of view.
- noun Movement or prevailing movement in a given direction.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Movement, or inclination to move, in some particular direction or toward some end or purpose; bent, leaning, or inclination toward some object, effect, or result; inclining or contributing influence.
- noun Synonyms Propensity, Inclination, etc. (see
bent ), drift, direction, bearing.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun Direction or course toward any place, object, effect, or result; drift; causal or efficient influence to bring about an effect or result.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun a
likelihood of behaving in a particular way or going in a particular direction; atending toward.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a characteristic likelihood of or natural disposition toward a certain condition or character or effect
- noun an inclination to do something
- noun a general direction in which something tends to move
- noun an attitude of mind especially one that favors one alternative over others
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Your expression, "and tends to depart in a slight degree," I think hardly grammatical; a _tendency_ to depart cannot very well be said to be in a slight degree; a _departure_ can, but a tendency must be either a _slight tendency_ or a _strong tendency_; the degree to which the departure may reach must depend on favourable or unfavourable causes in addition to the tendency itself.
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Mr. LaHood, in turn, has been criticized by some senior FAA officials for what they described as a tendency to micromanage FAA decisions.
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Your tendency is then to play a little safer, and that's not the way to play this game. ''
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Another tendency is the internationalization of the family, with branches of the same clan living in the United States and Canada, and establishing business operations with Nafta coverage.
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Another tendency is the internationalization of the family, with branches of the same clan living in the United States and Canada, and establishing business operations with Nafta coverage.
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We need not go far to find how deeply rooted this tendency is and to what exaggerations it will sometimes lead.
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Such a tendency is also revealed in Figure 1, where the yen became stronger against the dollar over the period, while the price level in the U.S. rose in relation to the
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An International Monetary Fund official Friday struck back at what he called a tendency in Malawi to scapegoat the IMF and the donor community for problems which are of the country's own making.
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He warned about what he described as the tendency of many countries to live beyond the level of development of their economies, and he called on the
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I regret to say that at the present time the tendency is a trifle different.
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