bias
- 1A tendency to lean toward or favor a particular thing, person, or viewpoint.
Like a pair of glasses with a colored tint: everything you see takes on that shade.
Critics noted a clear bias in how the article framed the two candidates.
He admitted his bias toward the home team colored his commentary.
Similarprejudice, preference, partiality, predisposition, predilection
Oppositeimpartiality, neutrality, objectivity, fairness
Note
The leaning of the mind is borrowed from a game. Bias meant an oblique line by about 1520, became a term in bowls around 1560, and by about 1570 described a pull on judgment like the curve of a weighted bowl. Hume's 1748 plural biasses is still a variant spelling. Locke speaks of morality giving a bias to actions. Recent writers warn of unconscious biases built into a system.
- 2To influence someone or something toward a particular outcome, away from neutrality.
Like tilting a pinball machine to send the ball where you want it.
The way a question is worded can bias respondents toward a particular answer.
Editors must avoid wording that biases readers against the accused.
Similarinfluence, sway, prejudice, skew
Note
The verb takes an object and usually a direction: something biases a person against or toward a choice. In 1963, Modern Railways wrote that faulty estimates had biassed the Treasury against electrification. That doubled-s spelling is a variant of biased, just as biassing stands beside biasing. Either is correct, as long as one spelling is used consistently.
- 3The systematic difference between an estimator's expected value and the true population value, which distorts how well it represents the data.
The team corrected for sampling bias when estimating the population mean.
Analysts reported the bias of each estimator alongside its variance.
Note
Statisticians mean something narrower than prejudice: the gap between what an estimator gives on average and the true value it aims at. A nonzero bias means the estimate errs in the same direction every time. That is separate from variance, because an estimator can be precise yet consistently wrong. For that reason analysts report the two side by side.
- 4Leaning to one side; bulging or swelled on one side.
Like a sack of grain that bulges on one side, throwing off its balance.
The carved beam appeared bias, one face swollen as if warped by damp.
Her knitting came out bias, pulled tighter along one edge than the other.
Oppositesymmetrical, even
Note
Shakespeare gives the physical adjective its best-known outing in Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602). There a trumpeter is urged to blow until his "sphered bias cheek" swells, round and puffed out to one side like a lopsided bowl. The word sits before its noun there. Biased once carried the same bodily meaning of bulging or leaning to one side.
- 5Cut on a slant or diagonal across the grain of a fabric, rather than along the straight weave.
Like slicing diagonally across a striped ribbon so the stripes run at an angle.
A bias collar molds smoothly around the curve of the neck.
Dressmakers favor bias panels where the fabric must hug the body.
- 6In a slanting, crosswise, or diagonal manner.
The tailor always cut the trim bias so it would curve gently.
Set the slats bias and the light filters through at an angle.
Similardiagonally, obliquely, crosswise, slantwise
Oppositestraight
Note
Tailors put it straight after the verb: to cut cloth bias, to cut the trim bias. It cannot be graded, so nothing is cut more bias than something else. Before a noun the same word becomes an adjective, as in a bias collar. After a verb of cutting or setting, it is this adverb.
- 7To apply a steady voltage or current to an electronic device in order to set its operating point.
Designers bias each transistor to fix its quiescent current.
The diode is biased forward so that current can pass.
Note
Engineers apply the verb to whole devices as well as single electrodes. H. Dijkstra and J. Libby (2002) describe an implant on a silicon detector that provides the contact "to bias the detector." The passive is common, often with a direction: the diode is biased forward. The steady quantity being applied is the electronic bias itself.
- 8The diagonal line across woven fabric, running between the lengthwise warp and crosswise weft threads.
Sewing along the bias gives the seam a little give.
The dressmaker marked the bias before cutting the panels.
Note
The diagonal of the cloth keeps the word's oldest meaning, the oblique line from which the mental leaning later grew. It lies at roughly 45 degrees, midway between warp and weft. Cloth cut along it stretches more and drapes more fluidly than cloth cut on the straight grain. That is why dressmakers mark the bias before cutting anything that must curve or cling.
- 9A wedge-shaped piece of cloth taken out of a garment, such as at the waist, to reduce its circumference.
A neat bias at the waistline pulled the loose gown closer to her figure.
The seamstress removed a bias from each hip to take in the skirt.
Note
Here the word names a piece of cloth rather than a direction: a wedge cut away to draw a garment in, often at the waist. Keep it apart from the diagonal of the weave. You remove a bias, or several, from a skirt, but you cut along the diagonal. A dressmaker's instruction can turn on which one is meant.
- 10A voltage or current applied to an electronic device, such as a transistor, to set its operating point.
Engineers adjusted the bias until the amplifier ran in its linear range.
A small forward bias lets the diode conduct.
Note
Engineers treat it as the steady background a signal rides on. A fixed DC level sets the operating point, and the changing signal then swings around that point within the useful part of the device's transfer function. Like the weight in a bowl, it pushes the device off neutral on purpose. The action of applying it is to bias a device.
- 11A fan's favorite member of a K-pop group.
He spent the whole concert filming his bias.
Choosing a bias was hard because she loved every member equally.
Similarfavorite
Note
K-pop fans almost always use it with a possessive: my bias, many fans' bias, a selca with your bias. Outside the fandom it still needs explaining. Joelle Weatherford, writing in The Eagle in 2019, introduces Minho as "what is called my bias or favorite member." The word keeps the warmth of a preference and drops any sense of unfairness.
- 12The weighting or lopsided shape on one side of a bowls ball that makes it follow a curved path as it rolls.
Reading the bias correctly is the heart of a good bowls delivery.
He aimed wide, trusting the bias to bring the bowl back toward the target.
Note
Bowls is where the word's figurative life began, as the mental leaning shows. On the green it covers three linked things: the weight on one side, the lopsided build, and the curved line the bowl follows. In lawn bowls only the shape may produce the curve, since weights are banned. Walter Scott's "concealed bias within the spheroid" (1822) pictures the weighted kind.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of bias apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
First recorded in English around 1520 meaning "oblique line", it became a technical term in the game of bowls (c. 1560), which gave rise to its figurative use. It comes from Middle French 'biais' ("sideways, askance"), likely from Old Occitan 'biais' of obscure origin, most probably from Vulgar Latin *biaxius, "with two axes".