preponderate

present singular third person preponderates · participle present preponderating · participle past preponderated · past preponderated

1. transitiveTo 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 magnitudes

   1665, Joseph Glanvill, Scepsis Scientifica

   Synonyms: overbalance

2. transitiveTo 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. obsoletetransitiveTo 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. intransitiveTo exceed in weight or influence; hence, to predominate.

   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

   3 more examples

   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

   The natives of Banda are very much mixed, and it is probable that at least three-fourths of the population are mongrels, in various degrees of Malay, Papuan, Arab, Portuguese, and Dutch. 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