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''prepossessing'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260904152658-00-⌔

prepossessing - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

prepossessing (comparative more prepossessing, superlative most prepossessing)

  • Tending to invite favor; attracting confidence, favor, esteem, or love; attractive
    • ✤ Synonym: pleasing
    • ✤ “I am a great advocate for timidity—and I am sure one does not often meet with it.—But in those who are at all inferior, it is extremely prepossessing.”1
    • ✤ Our curate is a young gentleman of such prepossessing appearance, and fascinating manners, that within one month after his first appearance in the parish, half the young-lady inhabitants were melancholy with religion, and the other half, desponding with love.2
    • ✤ These natural graces in the quadroon are often united with beauty of the most dazzling kind, and in almost every case with a personal appearance prepossessing and agreeable.3
    • ✤ In repose the faces of the men were intelligent and dignified, those of the women ofttimes prepossessing.4
    • ✤ He was a frank, prepossessing fellow, but I saw that he could add nothing to his original account.5
    • ✤ The stations are generally very poor, even for a branch line; some are mere wooden shacks, and Moniaive itself is one of the least prepossessing terminal stations I have ever seen.6
  • (archaic) Causing prejudice.

Verb

prepossessing

  • present participle and gerund of prepossess

Etymology

From prepossess +‎ -ing. Attested in 1610s with the meaning of “getting possession of (ground or land) beforehand”. The meaning “to possess (a person) beforehand with a feeling, notion, etc.” developed in 1630s, acquiring by the 40s of the same century the meaning of “to cause (someone) to have a favorable opinion of something, preoccupy the mind or heart of”.

Printed 2026-09-04.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1815, Jane Austen, Emma, volume II, chapter 15: ↩

  2. 1836, “Boz” [pseudonym; Charles Dickens], “The curate. The old lady. The half-pay captain”, in Sketches by “Boz,” Illustrative of Every-day Life, and Every-day People. […], volume, London: John Macrone, […], →OCLC: ↩

  3. 1851 June – 1852 April, Harriet Beecher Stowe, “chapter 2”, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly, volume, Boston, Mass.: John P[unchard] Jewett & Company; Cleveland, Oh.: Jewett, Proctor & Worthington, published 20 March 1852, →OCLC: ↩

  4. 1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 126: ↩

  5. 1931, H. P. Lovecraft, chapter 3, in The Whisperer in Darkness: ↩

  6. 1944 January and February, E. R. McCarter, “The Cairn Valley Light Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 48: ↩