favoring

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of favor.

   Critics accused the board of favoring established firms over newcomers.

   By favoring speed over accuracy, the runners made careless mistakes.

   Note

   One spelling, two jobs. After a form of be it is the progressive verb (the board was favoring insiders). Elsewhere it is a gerund that still takes a direct object, as in by favoring speed over accuracy. It can carry any meaning of favor, from preferring to encouraging to resembling. Once it takes of, or the plural favorings, it has become the noun of preference.

2. 2
   biasnoununcountable

   The act or state of preferring one thing or person over others; partiality or preference.

   His open favoring of the eldest child caused tension in the family.

   The policy's favoring of local suppliers raised questions about fairness.

   Similarfavoritism, preference, partiality, bias

   Oppositeimpartiality, neutrality, fairness

   Note

   Philosophy treats a preference as something countable, so the word readily takes a plural. Stefan Fischer's The Origin of Oughtness (2018) weighs "moral favorings in general" against the intuition that what we ought to do does not depend on what we want. Outside that field the word usually stays singular and is followed by of, as in the favoring of local suppliers. Preference is the plainer everyday choice.

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