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PREVAILING
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Most frequent or common
Example:
prevailing winds
Synonyms:
dominant; predominant; prevailing; prevalent; rife
Classified under:
Similar:
frequent (coming at short intervals or habitually)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb prevail
Context examples:
Grave and reverend seniors seemed to have caught the prevailing spirit as badly as the students, and I saw white-bearded men rising and shaking their fists at the obdurate Professor.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
There was a thought yet nearer, a more prevailing, more impetuous concern.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
Sir John was delighted; for to a man, whose prevailing anxiety was the dread of being alone, the acquisition of two, to the number of inhabitants in London, was something.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
Miss Crawford saw much of Sir Thomas's thoughts as he stood, and having, in spite of all his wrongs towards her, a general prevailing desire of recommending herself to him, took an opportunity of stepping aside to say something agreeable of Fanny.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
The wind fell away entirely during the evening, and at midnight there was a dead calm, a sultry heat, and that prevailing intensity which, on the approach of thunder, affects persons of a sensitive nature.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
His face, however, was tanned of a dull yellow tint, with a leathery, poreless look, which spoke of rough outdoor doings, and the little pointed beard which he wore, in deference to the prevailing fashion, was streaked and shot with gray.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
In most tropical regions, two factors control the timing of the rainy season: monsoon winds (a seasonal change of direction in prevailing winds) and the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), a belt of converging trade winds around the equator that shifts north or south with the seasons.
(New Study Shows the Amazon Makes Its Own Rainy Season, NASA)
He said, “they commonly acted like mortals till about thirty years old; after which, by degrees, they grew melancholy and dejected, increasing in both till they came to fourscore. This he learned from their own confession: for otherwise, there not being above two or three of that species born in an age, they were too few to form a general observation by. When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions. But those objects against which their envy seems principally directed, are the vices of the younger sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral, they lament and repine that others have gone to a harbour of rest to which they themselves never can hope to arrive. They have no remembrance of anything but what they learned and observed in their youth and middle-age, and even that is very imperfect; and for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition, than upon their best recollections. The least miserable among them appear to be those who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories; these meet with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which abound in others.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Researchers say the electrification of Titan’s sands could explain why dunes on the moon, some of which are more than 90 meters tall, form in the opposite direction of the prevailing winds.
('Electric Sands' Cover Titan, VOA News)
The satisfaction of prevailing on one of the most worthless young men in Great Britain to be her husband might then have rested in its proper place.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
