prepossessing

prepossessing (comparative more prepossessing, superlative most prepossessing)

1. Tending to invite favor; attracting confidence, favor, esteem, or love; attractive

   a prepossessing manner

   • 1815, Jane Austen, Emma, volume II, chapter 15:

     "I am a great advocate for timidity—and I am sure one does not often meet with it.—But in those who are at all inferior, it is extremely prepossessing."

   • 1836, Charles Dickens, Sketches by Boz, The curate. The old lady. The half-pay captain

     Our curate is a young gentleman of such prepossessing appearance, and fascinating manners, that within one month after his first appearance in the parish, half the young-lady inhabitants were melancholy with religion, and the other half, desponding with love.

   • 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, chapter 2

     These natural graces in the quadroon are often united with beauty of the most dazzling kind, and in almost every case with a personal appearance prepossessing and agreeable.

   • 1931, H. P. Lovecraft, The Whisperer in Darkness, chapter 3:

     He was a frank, prepossessing fellow, but I saw that he could add nothing to his original account.

2. (archaic) Causing prejudice.

• prepossessing in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.