Penchant
//ˈpɛnt͡ʃənt// noun
noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 Taste, liking, or inclination (for). countable, uncountable
"He has a penchant for fine wine."
- 2 a strong liking wordnet
- 3 A card game resembling bezique. uncountable
- 4 In the game of penchant, any queen and jack of different suits held at the same time. countable, uncountable
Example
More examples"He has a penchant for whistling at pretty ladies he sees on the street."
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”).
Related phrases
More for "penchant"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.