tendency

English

Etymology

Ultimately from Latin tendere / tendō.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈtɛndənsi/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Hyphenation: ten‧den‧cy

Noun

tendency (plural tendencies)

1. A likelihood of behaving in a particular way or going in a particular direction; a tending toward.

   Denim has a tendency to fade.

   I have a tendency to get bored after the first half an hour of a movie.

   There's a common tendency among first-game visitors to a casino to bet overcautiously.

2. (politics) An organised unit or faction within a larger political organisation.
   • 1974, James Boggs, Grace Lee Boggs, Revolution and Evolution, NYU Press →ISBN, page 134

     Mao launched the struggle against the vulgar materialist tendency within the party as early as 1937.

   • 1997, S. Onslow, Backbench Debate within the Conservative Party and its Influence on British Foreign Policy, 1948-57, Springer →ISBN, page 234

     In stark contrast to the Europeanist tendency within the party and the Suez Group, this group had a short history.

   • 2013, Richard Gillespie, Lourdes Lopez Nieto, Michael Waller, Factional Politics and Democratization, Routledge →ISBN, page 83

     It reinforced the position of the conformist tendency within the party, since the majority of the candidates were old politicians, many of them members of Papandreou's centre-left CU faction back in the mid-1960s.

Synonyms

• inclination
• disposition
• propensity
• penchant
• trend

Derived terms

• multitendency

Translations

likelihood of behaving in a particular way

• Arabic: مَيْل‎ m (mayl), نَزَعَة‎ f (nazaʿa)
• Armenian: միտում (hy) (mitum)
• Azerbaijani: meyil (az), tendensiya
• Belarusian: тэндэ́нцыя f (tendéncyja)
• Catalan: tendència f
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 趨勢 (zh), 趋势 (zh) (qūshì), 傾向 (zh), 倾向 (zh) (qīngxiàng)

• Czech: sklon (cs) m, tendence (cs) f
• Dutch: neiging (nl) f
• Esperanto: emo, inklino, tendenco
• Finnish: taipumus (fi)
• French: tendance (fr) f
• Georgian: ტენდენცია (ṭendencia), მიდრეკილება (midreḳileba)
• German: Tendenz (de) f (not often used in this sense, one would rather use a verb such as "zu (...) neigen" or tendieren)
• Greek: τάση (el) f (tási), ροπή (el) f (ropí)
• Haitian Creole: tandans
• Hebrew: נטייה‎ (he) f (n'tiyá)
• Hindi: प्रवृत्ति (hi) (pravŕtti)

• Hungarian: irány (hu)
• Indonesian: kecenderungan (id)
• Italian: tendenza (it) f
• Japanese: 傾向 (ja) (けいこう, keikō), 趨勢 (ja) (すうせい, sūsei)
• Kazakh: нысай (nısay)
• Korean: 경향 (ko) (gyeonghyang) (傾向 (ko)), 추세 (ko) (chuse) (趨勢 (ko))
• Latin: prōpensiō f
• Malay: kecenderungan (ms)
• Norwegian: tendens (no) m
• Plautdietsch: Läne n
• Polish: tendencja (pl) f, skłonność (pl) f
• Portuguese: tendência (pt) f
• Romanian: tendință (ro) f, înclinație (ro) f
• Russian: тенде́нция (ru) f (tɛndɛ́ncija)
• Spanish: tendencia (es) f
• Swedish: tendens (sv), trend (sv), benägenhet (sv)
• Tocharian B: rmamñe
• Turkish: eğilim (tr), tandans (tr)
• Ukrainian: тенде́нція f (tendéncija)
• Vietnamese: khuynh hướng (vi) (傾向), xu thế (vi) (趨勢)