2 meanings
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1 —as in:
prone to
Definition
having a tendency (to do something)- The child is prone to emotional outbursts.
prone = with a tendency (inclined to)
Other Uses (with this meaning)
- The region is prone to drought.
- The state's economy is completely dependent upon that industry and thus prone to booms and busts.
- Dr. Reynolds said if we had been boil-prone things would have been different, but we doubted it.Harper Lee -- To Kill a Mockingbird
- The advance guard which came down the street from the railroad station consisted of a number of Jeeps, being driven with a certain restraint, their gyration-prone wheels inactive on these old ways which offered nothing bumpier than a few cobblestones.John Knowles -- A Separate Peace
- I climbed trees and was prone to fall out of them.Rick Bragg -- All Over but the Shoutin'
- As he is subtle, and as prone to mischiefShakespeare, William -- King Henry VIII
- If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing which may tend to its increase.Epictetus
- Ever prone to magnify Fate, George counted up the forces that had swept him into this contentment.Forster, E. M. -- A Room With A View
- A nature prone to false enthusiasm, and the vanity of being a leader, were the worst qualities apparent in his composition.Dickens, Charles -- Barnaby Rudge - A Tale Of The Riots Of 'Eighty
prone = inclined (has a tendency)
prone = with a tendency to do something (in this case to get boils)
prone = with a tendency (to do something)
prone = had a tendency (to do something)
2 —as in:
prone position
Definition
lying face downward- The victim was found on the floor laying in a prone position.
prone = lying face downward
Other Uses (with this meaning)
- 80% of children who died of sudden infant death syndrome had been lying in a prone position.
- Mimi was greatly distressed when she saw her cousin lying prone.Stoker, Bram -- The Lair of the White Worm
- The window went up, a maid-servant's discordant voice profaned the holy calm, and a deluge of water drenched the prone martyr's remains!Twain, Mark -- Tom Sawyer
- A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position.George Washington -- Washington's Farewell Address
- In the affair of love, which, out of strict conformity with the Stoic philosophy, we shall here treat as a disease, this proneness to relapse is no less conspicuous.Henry Fielding -- Tom Jones
- And knowing your Mother's delicate health and that timorousness which such delicately nurtured Southern ladies would naturally feel regardingmatters of business, and their charming proneness to divulge unwittingly such matters in conversation, I would suggest that you do notmention it to her at all.William Faulkner -- The Sound and the Fury
- In Hester Prynne's instance, however, as not unfrequently in other cases, her sentence bore that she should stand a certain time upon the platform, but without undergoing that gripe about the neck and confinement of the head, the proneness to which was the most devilish characteristic of this ugly engine.Nathaniel Hawthorne -- The Scarlet Letter
- But no one paid attention when Ross tried unsuccessfully to explain his vote, and denounced the falsehoods of Ben Butler's investigating committee, recalling that the General's "well known grovelling instincts and proneness to slime and uncleanness" had led "the public to insult the brute creation by dubbing him 'the beast.'John F. Kennedy -- Profiles in Courage
prone = lying face downward