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penchant
in a sentence

show 67 more with this conextual meaning
  • According to my mother, Clarissa's penchant for baby blue eye shadow was an early warning sign, but I'd always liked her for just this reason.†   (source)
  • But poor Andy —even before he was skipped ahead a grade—had always been a chronically picked-upon kid: scrawny, twitchy, lactose-intolerant, with skin so pale it was almost transparent, and a penchant for throwing out words like 'noxious' and 'chthonic' in casual conversation.†   (source)
  • Enrique blames the boy's father for his aggressiveness and penchant to fight.†   (source)
  • I'm outmatched and my only ally is a hundred-pound sophomore with a penchant for the extraterrestrial.†   (source)
  • Sort of like the Grim Reaper, but with a penchant for sticking souls on a giant thorn tree… while the people's souls are still in their bodies.†   (source)
  • It also carried Phoebe Anne Moses of Tiffin, Ohio, a young woman with a penchant for guns and an excellent sense of distance.†   (source)
  • So alluring is his penchant for violence that the imitation Faulknerian story willhave a rape, three cases of incest, a stabbing, two shootings, and a suicide by drowning, all in two thousand words.†   (source)
  • I would be interested in your opinion of the view held by some of our European colleagues, that the penchant for it is a form of insanity.†   (source)
  • But I seemed to have a knack for it above and beyond my natural penchant for absorbing knowledge, so there was never too long a wait.†   (source)
  • He punctuated his speech with little "hah"s and "hum"s and archaic expressions, on top of which his penchant for modern slang teetered precariously.†   (source)
  • I had no idea why Vee was doing this, other than that she had a penchant for making everything as dramatic as possible.†   (source)
  • He developed a penchant for engineering, returned to school, and then worked for a firm headed by a Turkish business-man.†   (source)
  • The Under 13s had a star left forward in Josiah Saydee, another Liberian, whose awkward, toes-first gait masked amazing speed, as well as an experienced center midfielder in Qendrim Bushi, a stylish, mosquito-legged Kosovar with a penchant for wearing bright-colored bandanas around his neck during practice.†   (source)
  • It was Pea's one close exposure to an aspect of womankind that Gus was always talking about--their penchant for flying directly in the face of reason.†   (source)
  • Then there was his penchant for jumping into (not out of) trees.†   (source)
  • He had a penchant for leaping at her whenever she went by with the breakfast tray.†   (source)
  • "And it's not my fault that I have a penchant for good breeding, reasonable intelligence, and passable personal hygiene, not necessarily in that order."†   (source)
  • Yes, her Zayd is an experimenter who clearly shares his mom and dad's penchant for knowing which way the wind blows, being as fitted to his generation's awakening as they were to theirs.†   (source)
  • Across the sidewalk stood a pretty girl with chocolate brown hair and a penchant for wearing pink.†   (source)
  • A complete search of his mobile home turned up the man's penchant for Bibles and pictures of his mother, who'd passed away one year earlier.†   (source)
  • Assuming Awer's penchant for just causes, the citizens of that house ought to support the proper side.†   (source)
  • He found he enjoyed expressing himself on paper and had a penchant in such correspondence for endless philosophizing on the meaning of life.†   (source)
  • The senator's penchant for recording his sexual activities gave me the idea to use that as part of the pattern."†   (source)
  • If the police wanted to emphasize her penchant for vicious behaviour, then that report in her file would have been the most damning by far.†   (source)
  • Meanwhile the warlocks scorned the Fair Folk for their inability to lie, their hidebound customs, and their penchant for pettily annoying mundanes by curdling their milk and stealing their cows.†   (source)
  • Lemore was always pleasant company, despite her penchant for scolding him whenever he said something rude about the gods.†   (source)
  • His penchant was for textured synthetic fabrics, often featuring some geometric design like diamonds or pentagons.†   (source)
  • The "Billy" referred to was an aged Dallas tramp seen frequently panhandling in the tourist areas; the "Burlap" defined his penchant for wrapping his shoes in coarse cloth to play upon the sympathies of his marks.†   (source)
  • So far, the only blemish on Parker's record while serving the president is a penchant for tardiness, as Crook knows all too well.†   (source)
  • But I'd underestimated The Shade and its penchant for surprises.†   (source)
  • Nor was I fearful of giving a gentle dig in the ribs at McGraw-Hill and its penchant for publishing trashy "fun" books which could be excerpted in places like Reader's Digest for a hefty advance (though my japery may have contributed to my downfall).†   (source)
  • She has a penchant for bursting into song.
  • He had a penchant for loudly announcing the obvious.†   (source)
  • In any case he had a penchant for civil disobedience on a private level.†   (source)
  • "You must have a penchant for disturbing me," the doctor said lividly.†   (source)
  • Though he knew Gus's penchant for trouble, it was a shock to see Pea Eye in such a state.†   (source)
  • Lucas had always had a penchant for young women.†   (source)
  • Given the family's penchant for Intermarriage, this could mean almost anything.†   (source)
  • The city's papers made repeated reference to her penchant for acting in accord with "her own sweet will."†   (source)
  • The venerated Jacques Saunière had a renowned penchant for privacy and granted very few meetings; Langdon was grateful simply for the opportunity to meet him.†   (source)
  • For standing at the edge of his table was the young girl with the penchant for yellow—studying him with that unapologetic interest peculiar to children and dogs.†   (source)
  • Vernet's credit card records showed a penchant for art books, expensive wine, and classical CD's—mostly Brahms—which he apparently enjoyed on an exceptionally high-end stereo system he had purchased several years ago.†   (source)
  • Passing the young girl with the penchant for yellow who was reading a magazine in her favorite lobby chair, the Count came to an abrupt stop before the potted palms in order to address his escort.†   (source)
  • He knew that revolvers of this particular model had a penchant for accidental discharge when bumped or dropped, so he loaded it with only five cartridges and kept the empty chamber under the hammer.†   (source)
  • The Tribune, in an unintended parody of its own penchant for describing the gowns of the rich, noted that Lola, a South Sea Islander, wore her "native costume of bark cloth covering about half the body, with low cut and sleeveless bodice."†   (source)
  • While in the ballroom, the weighty remarks and late arrivals that once characterized the Assemblies now characterize Dinners of State (though no one with a penchant for yellow spies from the balcony anymore).†   (source)
  • She may have begun to believe the stories she heard in the neighborhood of Holmes's penchant for acquiring things on credit and then not paying for them—stories she had heard all along, for they were rife, but that she at first had dismissed as the gossip of envious hearts.†   (source)
  • Both my sister and I had strayed far from the way we were dressed as children, my mother having a penchant for the colors of the flag.†   (source)
  • 'He's ascribed that failure to the Russian penchant for corruption and mindless conformity in the higher ranks, and alcohol in the lower ones.†   (source)
  • But everyone here, including some former students, knew of Clarence's famously elliptical queries, his winding citations of Scripture, his penchant for answering a simple question with a more complex one.†   (source)
  • Given my record and the time I spent over here, as well as Sheng's well-known penchant for secrecy, it's actually quite plausible.†   (source)
  • Even though Blomkvist was used to Salander's penchant for shocking clothing, he was amazed that his sister had allowed her to show up to the courtroom in a black leather miniskirt with frayed seams and a black top—with the legend I AM ANNOYED—which barely covered her many tattoos.†   (source)
  • The Cineplex was showing some kind of murder mystery, which Amma would have liked, given her penchant for mysteries and dead bodies.†   (source)
  • It was called the Buckhorn, because of the owner's penchant for using deer horns for coat and hat racks.†   (source)
  • And once in an extravagant piece of waggery, speaking of reincarnation (about which he said he was not so skeptical as to rule it beyond possibility), he claimed to have been in a past life the only Jewish Albigensian monk—a brilliant friar named St. Nathan le Bon who had singlehandedly promulgated that crazy sect's obsessive penchant for self-destruction, which was based on the reasoning that if life is evil, it is necessary to hasten life's end.†   (source)
  • I suppose he had a penchant for me and wasn't sure of himself.†   (source)
  • He seems to have a penchant for my children.†   (source)
  • To say that Lincoln's approach to the slavery question was governed by his penchant for philosophic resignation is not to say that he had no policy of his own.†   (source)
  • You put on a nice unpretentious facade, and then behind it indulge your priestly penchant for silk.†   (source)
  • A universal penchant for nasty verbal exchanges and outbursts of rage, even for fisticuffs.†   (source)
  • When she had first returned to her country there had been a pagan, Swinburnian young man in Asheville, for whose passionate kisses and unsentimental conversations she had taken a decided penchant—they had discussed the matter pro and con with an intellectual romancing quite devoid of sappiness.†   (source)
  • With a turn for literary expression myself, and a penchant for forcible figures and phrases, I appreciated, as no other listener, I dare say, the peculiar vividness and strength and absolute blasphemy of his metaphors.†   (source)
  • They all stem from his penchant for honor, of course, from his fear that his feelings will fail him, the same fear that makes him love the classic gifts, the regalements, the way he does.†   (source)
  • I won't listen to you—you are so profane!" she said, in a restless state between distress at hearing him and a penchant to hear more.†   (source)
  • They were going from end to end of the country in all manner of useful missionary capacities; their penchant for wandering, and their experience in it, made them altogether the most effective spreaders of civilization we had.†   (source)
  • "Little friend," said he, in quite a changed tone — while his face changed too, losing all its softness and gravity, and becoming harsh and sarcastic — "you have noticed my tender penchant for Miss Ingram: don't you think if I married her she would regenerate me with a vengeance?"†   (source)
  • On the whole though favouring preferably light opera of the Don Giovanni description and Martha, a gem in its line, he had a penchant, though with only a surface knowledge, for the severe classical school such as Mendelssohn.†   (source)
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