Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Penchant   /pˈɛntʃənt/   Listen
Penchant

noun
1.
A strong liking.  Synonyms: predilection, preference, taste.  "The Irish have a penchant for blarney"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Penchant" Quotes from Famous Books



... the Dorsetshire Lee-Haileys, and rather a pretty-faced, silly person, with a penchant for French novels and sulphonal tabloids. I always shall believe that she liked the handsome Dragoon best, and took advantage of the Doctor's being—under the cloud of acquittal by a British Jury, to give him what the dear Irish call 'the back ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... course of study is flexible, and because of its resiliency it adapts itself easily and gracefully to the native dispositions and the aptitudes of the various pupils. If the boy has a penchant for agriculture, provision is made for him, both in the theory and in the practical applications of the subject. If he inclines to science, the laboratories accord him a gracious welcome. The studies are adapted to the boy and not the ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... have a pronounced penchant for amputation, Mr. Bridewell," he said after a moment. "Competent surgeon, ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... in mind, Keith replied, "No, no, much greater men than either you or I have waited longer for him before now; let him take his time, let him take his time." This was nobly said of the fine old Scotchman; and although Cockburn and I are blood relations, and I have a particular penchant for my lineage, I cannot help remarking that his manner denoted a great want of feeling. I suppose he was pitched upon by Castlereagh as a proper tool ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland

... willingness, voluntariness &c. adj[obs3].; willing mind, heart. disposition, inclination, leaning, animus; frame of mind, humor, mood, vein; bent &c. (turn of mind) 820; penchant &c. (desire) 865; aptitude &c. 698. docility, docibleness[obs3]; persuasibleness[obs3], persuasibility[obs3]; pliability &c. (softness) 324. geniality, cordiality; goodwill; alacrity, readiness, earnestness, forwardness; eagerness &c. (desire) 865. asset &c. 488; compliance ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... imagination, conception, conceit, idea, apprehension, impression, opinion, notion; caprice, whim, whimsey, fantasy, vagary, maggot, crotchet; inclination, liking, fondness, penchant, taste. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... Geoffrey could coax a glittering drop. Yes—he was at Baldpate Inn. He remembered—the climb with the dazed Quimby up the snowy road, the plaint of the lovelorn haberdasher, the vagaries of the professor with a penchant for blondes, the mysterious click of the door-latch on the floor above. And last of all—strange that it should have been last—a girl in blue corduroy somewhat darker than her eyes, who wept amid the ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers

... Brandeis took to prowling. There are people who have a penchant for cities—more than that, a talent for them, a gift of sensing them, of feeling their rhythm and pulse-beats, as others have a highly developed music sense, or color reaction. It is a thing that cannot be acquired. In Fanny Brandeis there was this abnormal response to the color and tone of any ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber

... on; and Brady himself couldn't have hammered the thirst mob into a better imitation of the real penchant for the stuff that you screw out of ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry

... this garden calls up," said Nina, who like many essentially simple and direct people, had a strong dash of sentiment and a strong penchant for being her own emotional pint-stoup on the traditional subjects and occasions. "I remember so well coming here in a new pink frock when I was a little girl. It wasn't so ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... place in the public eye for a decade than any of his colleagues the world over; students were privileged to study a first work by an eminent musician, whose laurels had been won in a very different field; curiosity lovers had their penchant gratified to the full. The popular interest in the affair was disclosed by the fact that never before in the season had the audience at the Metropolitan been so numerous or brilliant; naturally the presence ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... sombres et courts comme les jours d'automne, Dclinent comme l'ombre au penchant des coteaux; L'amiti te trahit, la piti t'abandonne, Et, seule, tu ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield

... and as Mark was present, Juno seized the opportunity for ascertaining, if possible, his real opinion of Helen Lennox, joking him first about his having taken her to ride so soon, and insinuating that he must have a penchant for every new and ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... curious and interesting, the literary fate of Charles Lamb. Jocular Bishops, archly toying Rural Deans, Rectors with a "penchant" for anecdote, scholarly Canons with a weakness for Rum Punch, are all inclined to speak as if in some odd way he was of their own very tribe. He had absolutely nothing in common with them, except a talent for giving false impressions! With regard ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... account for facts and sequences in other terms than those of causation or matter-of-fact, they lower his productive efficiency or industrial usefulness. This lowering of efficiency through a penchant for animistic methods of apprehending facts is especially apparent when taken in the mass-when a given population with an animistic turn is viewed as a whole. The economic drawbacks of animism are more patent and its consequences are more far-reaching under the modern system of large industry than ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... the open festering gutters. As a natural result, small pox and cholera commit yearly ravages amongst the populace. Another great evil against good sanitation, exists in the shallowness of their graves. The Japanese have also a penchant ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... years old smokes a cigarette of the thickness of pack-thread. When she has attained her fourteenth or fifteenth year, and is already marriageable, she is allowed to indulge her penchant at will, which is forbidden when younger. After this age the diameter of the cigarette increases year by year; and when a lady has reached the mature age of twenty-four, no one sees anything remarkable in her smoking a modest little ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... the rebels who helped sack Sinaloa and carry off half a million in money and valuables. Rojas spends gold like he spills blood. But he is chiefly famous for abducting women. The peon girls consider it an honor to be ridden off with. Rojas has shown a penchant for ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... He had tried every conceivable trick: had walked on the stage in one of Wilson's scenes; had started a quarrel with an usher in the audience—everything that ingenuity could conceive he had practised on his friend. Bok had known this penchant of Field's, and when he insisted on taking the bag of oranges into the theatre, Field's purpose ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... and make yourself quite at home. You're right, it is getting sharp and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see signs of frost, the first of the season, in the morning. We're up here knocking about a little, partly to hunt, but mostly because I've a penchant, that is, a weakness for exploring out-of-the-way places. Stackpole, did you say your name was?—well, mine's Cuthbert Reynolds, this is my friend, Eli Perkins, and, you seem to know Owen, so I won't try to introduce him. Have you had supper—if not there's something ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne

... do not fail to look out of the rear windows upon the ancient Granary Burying Ground, where rest the ashes of Hancock, Sewall, Faneuil, Samuel Adams, Otis, Revere, and many more notables. If you have a penchant for graveyards, this one, entered from Tremont Street, is more than worthy of ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery

... nature, characterized by a penchant for escapade, is denoted by the joy-wheel at the base of Halley's Comet. And so we come to the life-belt. This—my word, this is all right! Unrivalled for resistance to damp and wear, will last three to six ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... to bring him rigid justice at your hands," Honor interrupted, "but still I would rather declare, that I am entirely innocent of ever having had the slightest penchant in that direction." ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... that there was a crowd of foolish prigs and pedants in Rome to take note of these so trivial things, and to be more irked by them than by all the realities of his power:—a lean hungry Cassius; an envious brusque detractor Casca; a Brutus with a penchant for being considered a philosopher, after a rather maiden-auntish sort of conception of the part,—and for being considered a true descendant of his well-known ancestor: a cold soul much fired with the ignis fatuus of Republican slave-scourging province-fleecing ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... the odes of Hafiz are addressed to youths, as proved by such Arabic exclamations as 'Afaka 'llah Allah assain thee (masculine)[FN400]: the object is often fanciful but it would be held coarse and immodest to address an imaginary girl.[FN401] An illustration of the penchant is told at Shiraz concerning a certain Mujtahid, the head of the Shi'ah creed, corresponding with a prince-archbishop in Europe. A friend once said to him, "There is a question I would fain address to your Eminence but I lack the daring to do so." "Ask ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... more serious studies Levinsohn diverted himself occasionally with lighter composition, in which many an antiquated custom served as the butt for his biting satire. In his youth he had a penchant for poetry, and his poem on the flight, or expulsion, of the French from Russia was complimented by the Government. His muse dealt with ephemeral themes, but his bons mots are current among his countrymen to this day. A novel sort of plagiarism was the fashion of the time. Authors ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin

... narrate later. By building shops in this manner we were able to boast a Bond Street, from which in a short time radiated other thoroughfares which were similarly christened after the fashionable streets of London—we had a strange penchant for the West-End when it came to naming our streets. The result is that to-day Ruhleben can point to its Fleet Street, its Trafalgar ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... entire stud of pale horses on flowery expressions and japonica-domish flubdubs. He revels in all those knock-kneed, antique, or crooked and twisted words we used all of us to puzzle our brains over in the days of our youth, and grammar lessons and rhetoric exercises. He has a penchant as strong as cheap boarding-house butter, for mystification, and a free delivery of hard words, perfectly and unequivocally wonderful. We listened one long hour by the clock of Rumford Hall, one night, to an outpouring of argumentum ad hominem of Mr. Emerson's—at what? A boy under an apple ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... say to which sex it is a greater compliment that widows always prove such successful fascinators. Either they still have a penchant for mankind, despite their intimate acquaintance with him—in which case the men may congratulate themselves; or else they have so completely found men out that they find no difficulty in entrapping them —in which case it is the women's turn ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain

... faded from Francis' glance. The situation appealed to his strong penchant for merry plaisanterie. Besides—such was his overweening pride—to hear a woman confess she cared for another dampened his own ardor, instead of stimulating it. "None but himself could be his parallel;" the royal lover could brook ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... out by Cupid's presentation chocolates and marshmallows. Of the latter—a novelty to her—she and Sadie were very fond. They seemed nourishing, too, or, at all events, "filling," and came in handy when you had allotted yourself only five cents for luncheon. As soon as Cupid learned his loved one's penchant for marshmallows he contrived to produce a few each day, even if he had to "nick" them when ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson



Words linked to "Penchant" :   acquired taste, liking, weakness, preference, taste



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com