MEANING
To make someone more likely to develop a condition or respond in a particular way.
Use it for
describing a tendency that is not inevitable; explaining increased susceptibility to an outcome; linking prior conditions to a greater likelihood of a responseExpresses an increased tendency or susceptibility without claiming inevitability or a sufficient cause. Academic functions: Causation / Relationships.
Words that belong together
- predispose someone to a condition
- predispose readers to accept
- genetically predisposed to
On the page
Repeated exposure to a claim may predispose readers to accept it as familiar.
Early exclusion can predispose individuals to distrust institutions without determining every later response.
Nearby words
Word forms
- Base
- predispose
- Past tense
- predisposed
- Past participle
- predisposed
- Present participle
- predisposing
Full tense & aspect guide
- Present
- predispose
- Present continuous
- am/is/are predisposing
- Present perfect
- have/has predisposed
- Present perfect continuous
- have/has been predisposing
- Past
- predisposed
- Past continuous
- was/were predisposing
- Past perfect
- had predisposed
- Past perfect continuous
- had been predisposing
- Future
- will predispose
- Future continuous
- will be predisposing
- Future perfect
- will have predisposed
- Future perfect continuous
- will have been predisposing
Choose the auxiliary that agrees with your subject. These are constructions of one word, not separate entries.
Usage notes
Transitive: predispose someone to + noun, or predispose someone to do something. Third-person predisposes; past and past participle predisposed; present participle predisposing. Register: formal. Commonness: moderately common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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