adj ·4 syllables ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective

1. 1
   Of or relating to the showing or giving of preference.

   "Club members received preferential seating."

2. 2
   Of or relating to a voting system in which the voters are allowed to indicate on their ballots their preference (usually their first and second choices) between two or more candidates, so that if no candidate receives a majority of first choices the one receiving the greatest number of first and second choices together is the winner.

   "preferential voting; the preferential system"

Adjective

1. 1
   manifesting partiality wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

betterdiscriminatorydiscriminatoryfavoredfavoringfavourite

Example

More examples

"There is a preferential price for unemployed people and the elderly."

Etymology

From Medieval Latin preferentia + -al.

Related phrases

preferential attachmentpreferential treatmentpreferential voting

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.