preponderant

See also: prépondérant

English

Alternative forms

• praeponderant (obsolete)

Etymology

From Latin praeponderāns, present participle of praeponderō (“I outweigh”).

Adjective

preponderant (comparative more preponderant, superlative most preponderant)

1. Having greater or the greatest weight, quantity, importance or force.

   Synonyms: dominant, overriding, predominant

   The judge gave preponderant weight to the physical evidence.

   Women continue to play a preponderant role in caregiving.

   • 1666, Robert Boyle, Hydrostatical Paradoxes‎^[1], Oxford: Richard Davis, Paradox I, page 28:

     […] if the Oyle and Water being in an Aequilibrium, you gently lift up the Pipe, […] the depth of the water being lessend, the oyle in the Pipe will grow praeponderant, and therefore will fall out in Drops or Globuls, which by the greater Specifick Gravity of the water, will be buoy’d up to the Top of the Liquor, and there flote:

   • 1767, George Canning, “Anti-Lucretius”, in Poems‎^[2], London: for the author, page 281:

     Behold the balanc’d Scales suspended stand,
     Neither a jot inclin’d to either hand:
     But place the smallest grain of weight in one,
     Straight the fraternal equipoise is gone;
     The loaded scale, preponderant, downward flies,
     Drags down the chain, and makes it’s [sic] partner rise.

   • 1832, Thomas De Quincey, chapter 7, in Klosterheim: or, The Masque‎^[3], London: T. Cadell, pages 109–110:

     For the present, however, the Swedes were the preponderant party in the neighbourhood; they had fortified the chateau of Falkenberg, and made it a very strong military post;

   • 1936, Olaf Stapledon, chapter 20, in Odd John‎^[4], New York: Galaxy Publishing, page 136:

     The place was much like any ordinary lab., crowded with jars, test-tubes, retorts and so on. It evidently served for work on both the physical and the biological sciences, but the biological was preponderant.

Related terms

• preponderance
• preponderantly
• preponderate

References

• “preponderant”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Romanian

Adjective

preponderant m or n (feminine singular preponderantă, masculine plural preponderanți, feminine and neuter plural preponderante)

1. Alternative form of preponderent

Declension

Declension of preponderant

		singular			plural
		masculine	neuter	feminine	masculine	neuter	feminine
nominative/ accusative	indefinite	preponderant		preponderantă	preponderanți	preponderante
	definite	preponderantul		preponderanta	preponderanții	preponderantele
genitive/ dative	indefinite	preponderant		preponderante	preponderanți	preponderante
	definite	preponderantului		preponderantei	preponderanților	preponderantelor