Did you know?
Prejudice: For or Against?
Although prejudice, with its connotations of intolerance
I, too, appreciate projects that treat a difficult subject with rigor, although I'll confess to harboring a bit of prejudice toward thing-biographies.
Adam Baer, Harper's, May 2011
That's true for the participial adjective prejudiced as well:
“The question itself as posed in the survey obviously is prejudiced in favor of the program,” said Tod Story, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada.
Neal Morton, Las Vegas Review Journal, 2 Aug. 2016
In negative constructions, prejudice and prejudiced often precede against:
Lee County Circuit Judge Jacob Walker on Tuesday ruled that claims of juror misconduct by former House Speaker Mike Hubbard failed to show that the jury was prejudiced against Hubbard.
Mike Cason, AL.com, 19 Oct. 2016
Examples of prejudice in a Sentence
Stephan Talty, Mulatto America, 2003
It is easy to suppose at this late date that there is barely any overt racism left in the United States, … Kennedy's catalog of mundane cases of explicit anti-black prejudice provides ample illustration of what lurks beneath the surface politeness of many whites.
—John McWhorter, New Republic, 14 Jan. 2002
The boundaries between hate and prejudice and between prejudice and opinion and between opinion and truth are so complicated and blurred that any attempt to construct legal and political fire walls is a doomed and illiberal venture.
—Andrew Sullivan, New York Times Magazine, 26 Sept. 1999
When my mother, who, unlike my father, was Jewish, encountered unpleasant social prejudice during my high-school years, I acquired a second marginal identity.
—Carl E. Schorske, Thinking with History, 1998
The organization fights against racial prejudice.
religious, racial, and sexual prejudices
We tend to make these kinds of decisions according to our own prejudices.
He has a prejudice against fast-food restaurants.
Verb
Paul Revere … engraved the drawing and printed hundreds of vividly colored copies, which traveled throughout the colonies. Well might one judge at Captain Preston's trial complain that "there has been a great deal done to prejudice the People against the Prisoner."
—Hiller B. Zobel, American Heritage, July/August 1995
My friends would have had me delay my departure, but fearful of prejudicing my employers against me by such want of punctuality at the commencement of my undertaking, I persisted in keeping the appointment.
—Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey, 1847
all the bad stories I had heard about the incoming CEO prejudiced me against him even before the first meeting
Jenna Sundel, MSNBC Newsweek, 27 Oct. 2025
The amounts of prejudice that are built up in those Kingdom Halls, unbelievable.
—Nick Romano, Entertainment Weekly, 24 Oct. 2025
Dan Beck, Variety, 21 Oct. 2025
In a Friday letter submitted in New York federal court, Mangione's attorneys argued that social media posts and public comments made by the Department of Justice and White House have prejudiced Mangione’s right to a fair trial.
—Matt Lavietes, NBC news, 17 Oct. 2025
See All Example Sentences for prejudice
Cite this Entry
“Prejudice.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prejudice. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.
Copy CitationKids Definition
prejudice
1 of 2 noun
prejudice
2 of 2 verbNoun
Middle English prejudice "injury from a judgment, an opinion formed before knowing the facts," from early French prejudice (same meaning), from Latin praejudicium "previous judgment," from prae- "pre-, before" and judicium "judgment," from judic-, judex "judge," from jus "right, law" and dicere "to say" — related to judge, just
Legal Definition
prejudice
1 of 2 noun
National Law JournalNational Law JournalR. H. BorkU.S. Codeprejudice
2 of 2 transitive verbFederal Rules of Criminal Procedure Rule 14Noun
Old French, from Latin praejudicium previous judgment, damage, from prae- before + judicium judgment
Share