Word.ws English Dictionary

preponderate

preponderate verb: to outweigh; to be heavier than; to exceed in weight.

Verb

preponderate (third-person singular simple present preponderates, present participle preponderating, simple past and past participle preponderated)

  1. (transitive) To outweigh; to be heavier than; to exceed in weight.
    • an inconsiderable weight by virtue of its distance from the Centre of the Ballance, will preponderate much greater magnitudes1665, Joseph Glanvill, Scepsis Scientifica
    Synonyms:
    overbalance
  2. (transitive) To overpower by stronger or moral power.
    • That is the preponderating consideration to which everything else has to yield.1898, William Graham Sumner, “The Conquest of the United States by Spain”, in War and Other Essays, Yale, page 359
  3. (obsolete, transitive) To cause to prefer; to incline; to decide.
    • The desire to spare Christian blood preponderates him for peace.1642, Thomas Fuller, The Holy State, and the Profane State
  4. (intransitive) To exceed in weight or influence; hence, to predominate.
    • Anxiety preponderated over hope; and it was scarcely possible for Evelyn to encounter a danger not previously conjured up by the alarmed fancy of his mistress.1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter IV, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 22
    • […] if the principle of utility is good for anything, it must be good for weighing these conflicting utilities against one another, and marking out the region within which one or the other preponderates.1861, John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism

preponderate meaning in Malayalam

preponderate in Malayalam

ശക്തിയിൽ കവിയുക, ഭാരത്തിലധികപ്പെടുക, മുൻതൂക്കമായിരിക്കുക

Examples of preponderate in a sentence

  • The first two form the bases of the larger portion, and the dark skins, pronounced features, and more or less frizzly hair of the Papuans preponderates.1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume I, London: Macmillan and Co., page 456:
  • Train journeys were not long in terms of distance, and having regard to these factors, the tank engine inevitably preponderated.1939 September, D. S. Barrie, “The Railways of South Wales”, in Railway Magazine, page 161:

Synonyms of preponderate

Forms of preponderate

third-person singular presentpreponderates
present participlepreponderating
past participlepreponderated
pastpreponderated

Origin of preponderate

From Latin praeponderatus, past participle of praeponderāre (“to outweigh”).

Words formed from preponderate

Questions about preponderate

What does preponderate mean?
Preponderate means to outweigh; to be heavier than; to exceed in weight.
What is preponderate in Malayalam?
Preponderate in Malayalam is ശക്തിയിൽ കവിയുക, ഭാരത്തിലധികപ്പെടുക, മുൻതൂക്കമായിരിക്കുക. See Preponderate meaning in Malayalam.
How do you use preponderate in a sentence?
The first two form the bases of the larger portion, and the dark skins, pronounced features, and more or less frizzly hair of the Papuans preponderates.
What part of speech is preponderate?
Preponderate is a verb.
What is the past tense of preponderate?
The past tense of preponderate is preponderated.

Words near preponderate in the dictionary

  1. preponderances
  2. preponderancies
  3. preponderancy
  4. preponderant
  5. preponderantly
  6. preponderate
  7. preponderated
  8. preponderately
  9. preponderates
  10. preponderating
  11. preponderatingly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: preponderate (page history and authors); preponderate (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “preponderate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/preponderate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.