tendency

I

(New American Roget's College Thesaurus)

Disposition to act in a particular way

Nouns — tendency; aptness, aptitude; proneness, proclivity, predilection, bent, turn, tone, tenor, bias, set, leaning, penchant, [pre]disposition, inclination, propensity, susceptibility; likelihood, liability; nature, temperament; idiosyncrasy; cast, vein, grain; humor, mood; trend, drift, the way the wind blows; conduciveness, conducement; applicability. Informal, tendency. See speciality, intrinsic, direction.

Verbs — tend, contribute, conduce, lead, dispose, incline, verge, lean, bend to, trend, affect, carry, redound to, bid fair to, gravitate toward; be liable.

Adjectives — tending, conducive, working toward, in a fair way to, calculated to; liable, prone; useful, subsidiary.

Quotations — As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection (Charles Darwin), In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence (Laurence J. Peter), The forces of a capitalist society, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer (Jawaharlal Nehru).

Antonyms, see opposition.

II

(Roget's IV) n.

1. [Direction]

Syn. drift, aim, bent, trend, current; see also drift 1 .

2. [Inclination]

Syn. leaning, tenor, bias, bent; see inclination 1 .

Syn.- tendency refers to an inclination or disposition to move in a particular direction or act in a certain way, esp. as a result of some inherent quality or habit [ he has a tendency toward exaggeration ] ; trend suggests a general direction, with neither a definite course nor goal, subject to change or fluctuation by some external force [ a recent trend in literature ] ; current differs from trend in connoting a clearly defined course, but one also subject to change [ the current of one's life ] ; drift refers either to the course along which something is being carried or driven [ the drift toward absolute conformity ] or to a course taken by something that has unstated or unclear implications [ what is the drift of this argument? ] ; tenor , equivalent in this connection to drift , connotes more strongly the clarity or purport of the unstated purpose or objective [ the general tenor of the Bill of Rights ]

III

(Roget's 3 Superthesaurus) n.

inclination, disposition, leaning, bent, propensity, proclivity, proneness, penchant, predisposition, course, drift.

IV

(Roget's Thesaurus II) noun 1. An inclination to something: bent, bias, cast, disposition, leaning, partiality, penchant, predilection, predisposition, proclivity, proneness, propensity, squint, trend, turn. See APPROACH, LIKE. 2. The thread or current of thought uniting or occurring in all the elements of a text or discourse: aim, burden2, drift, intent, meaning, purport, substance, tenor, thrust. See MEANING.