All 3 Uses of

bias

in

This Side of Paradise

He had all the Henty biasses in history, and was particularly fond of the cheerful murder stories of Mary Roberts Rinehart.†
Chpt 1.1 *

He was rather sceptical about being an Irish patriot—he suspected that being Irish was being somewhat common—but Monsignor assured him that Ireland was a romantic lost cause and Irish people quite charming, and that it should, by all means, be one of his principal biasses.†
Chpt 1.1

Definitions:

(1) (bias)
a personal preference -- especially a prejudice that prevents objective consideration

or:

any tendency to move in a particular direction -- such as a car that tends to want to swerve toward the right
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
Specialized meanings of bias include:
- statistics: any of several errors that distort results
- textiles: a line or fold that is diagonal relative to the sides or grain of the fabric
- electronics: a steady-state current that is forced through an electronic device