prejudice
noun · verb · adjective
Simple meaning
An adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge of the facts.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
prehjuhdisSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈpɹɛdʒədɪs
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
countable
An adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge of the facts.
countable
A preconception, any preconceived opinion or feeling, whether positive or negative.
countable
An irrational hostile attitude, fear or hatred towards a particular group, race or religion.
verb
transitive
To have a negative impact on (someone's position, chances etc.).
Disadvantage by prejudice
transitive
To cause prejudice in; to bias the mind of.
adjective
Pronunciation spelling of prejudiced, representing African-American Vernacular English. [Having prejudices.]
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B1 · Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- General and technical use
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: An adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge of the facts.
Used this way, prejudice is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use prejudice
- “It is important to overcome prejudice and treat everyone equally.”
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
Being biased or having a belief or attitude formed beforehand.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
Tending to favor preconceived ideas.
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What Does It Mean Here?
Words can change meaning depending on context.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.