WordWealth: preponderate

pre·pon·der·ate , v.i., -at·ed, -at·ing.

And there is more trouble brewing. When the number of Scottish MPs falls after the Boundary Commission report, the ranks of constituency members of the Scottish Parliament should, according to statute, be reduced by the same amount. This is being resisted, on the arguable grounds that list MSPs should not be allowed to preponderate over constituency members, but also, less altruistically, because it will lead to a severe outbreak of turf wars among those scrabbling for seats. —— Arnold Kemp; Let this Child Flourish; The Observer; Dec 16 2001

This is what it's all about. It's about reading a paper on a Sunday morning while you're thinking about whether you can be arsed to go to the neighbours' New Year's Eve party tonight. It's about getting angry with me for having different opinions from yours or not expressing the ones you have as well as you would have expressed them. It's about the breakfast you've just had and the dinner you're going to have. It's about the random acts of kindness which still, magically, preponderate over acts of incivility or nastiness. It's about rereading Great Expectations and about who's going to win the 3.30 at Haydock Park. It's about being able to watch old episodes of Frasier on satellite TV whenever we want, having the choice of three dozen breakfast cereals and seven brands of virgin olive oil at Sainsbury's. It's about loving and being loved, about doing the right thing, about one day being missed when we're gone. —— John Diamond; Reasons to be Cheerful; The Observer; Dec 31, 2000

And this is not, of course, to speak of the drunks, neurotics, and pure creeps who sometimes appear to preponderate among contemporary authors. —— Joseph Epstein; 'Poison-Pen Pals';  Commentary, March 1999

I do not know whether it is to yourself or Mr. Adams I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new constitution. I beg leave through you to place them where due. It will be yet three weeks before I shall receive them from America. There are very good articles in it: & very bad. I do not know which preponderate. What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: & what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life. —— Thomas Jefferson; Tree of Liberty Letter; Letter to William Smith; dated: Paris, Nov 13, 1787; The Atlantic; 1996

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