penchant

English

Etymology

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”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈpɒnʃɒn/, [ˈpɑ̃ʃɑ̃], /ˈpɛnt͡ʃənt/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈpɛnt͡ʃənt/
• Rhymes: -ɒnʃɒn, -ɛntʃənt

Noun

penchant (countable and uncountable, plural penchants)

1. Taste, liking, or inclination (for).

   He has a penchant for fine wine.

   • 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XXII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 264:

     Marie even then began the course which, in after-years, secured her so vast an influence in the court,—alternately taking up and laying down her claim to the youthful monarch's penchant; administering to his amusement, and ready to encourage his passing fancies.

   • 1960 October, “New reading on railways”, in Trains Illustrated, page 640:

     THE LONDON & NORTH WESTERN RAILWAY. By O. S. Nock. Ian Allan. 30s.
     [...] One scarcely imagined, for example, that the great steel works at Crewe owed its existence to Sir Richard Moon's penchant for the principle of "Do it yourself", a principle born of a methodical, economical and far-seeing mind.

   • 2019, Idles, "Never Fight a Man With a Perm", Joy as an Act of Resistance.

     I said I've got a penchant for smokes and kicking douches in the mouth / Sadly for you my last cigarette's gone out

   • 2021 September 22, Stephen Roberts, “The writings on the wall...”, in RAIL, number 940, page 74:

     Just like Marple, there's a plaque at the London terminus [Paddington] commemorating a fictional character - a polite, friendly little bear from darkest Peru who has a penchant for marmalade sarnies.

2. (card games, uncountable) A card game resembling bezique.
3. (card games) In the game of penchant, any queen and jack of different suits held at the same time.

Synonyms

• desire, see also Thesaurus:predilection

Related terms

English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *(s)pend- (0 c, 36 e)

Translations

taste, liking, or inclination (for)

• Bulgarian: склонност (bg) f (sklonnost), предразположение (bg) n (predrazpoloženie)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 愛好／爱好 (zh) (àihào), 傾向／倾向 (zh) (qīngxiàng)

• Czech: vášeň (cs) f
• Dutch: neiging (nl) f, voorkeur (nl) f
• Finnish: mieltymys (fi)
• French: penchant (fr) m
• Georgian: მიდრეკილება (midreḳileba), მისწრაფება (misc̣rapeba)
• German: Vorliebe (de) f, Hang (de) m, Neigung (de) f
• Italian: inclinazione (it) m, apprezzamento (it) m
• Japanese: 傾向 (ja) (けいこう, keikō)
• Norwegian: forkjærlighet
• Persian: عاشق چیزی بودن, عشقِ چیزی بودن (informal)
• Polish: skłonność (pl) f, smykałka (pl) f
• Portuguese: inclinação (pt) f, predisposição f
• Russian: скло́нность (ru) f (sklónnostʹ), предпочте́ние (ru) n (predpočténije) (preference)
• Spanish: inclinación (es), gusto (es), predilección (es) f, propensión (es) f, proclividad f, preferencia (es) f, afición (es) f, pasión (es) f
• Swedish: böjelse (sv) c, förkärlek (sv) c, försmak (sv) c
• Welsh: gogwydd m, tuedd f

French

Noun

penchant m (plural penchants)

1. penchant

Participle

penchant

1. present participle of pencher

Further reading

• “penchant”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.