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Choice; inclination; liking; intent; will. If it be your minds, then let none go forth. 2 Kings ix. 15.

Hating or disliking mankind.

Relish; taste; liking; -- a sense originating in the mistaken notion that the palate is the organ of taste. Hard task! to hit the palate of such guests. Pope.

A predilection or inclination to one thing rather than to others; special taste or liking; as, a partiality for poetry or painting. Roget.

A previous liking; a prepossession of mind in favor of something; predisposition to choose or like; partiality. Burke.

To set above or before something else in estimation, favor, or liking; to regard or honor before another; to hold in greater favor; to choose rather; -- often followed by to, before, or above. If I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. Ps. cxxxvii. 6. Preferred an infamous peace before a most just war. Knolles. Pref…

A taste for; liking; appetite; fondness. A relish for whatever was excelent in arts. Macaulay. I have a relish for moderate praise, because it bids fair to be jCowper.

A fancy or liking. [Local, U. S.] Bartlett.

A liking for a person; a fancy. [Slang, U.S.]

See Spilikin.

Taste; relish; inclination; liking. [Colloq.] I have no swallow for it. Massinger.

Intellectual relish; liking; fondness; -- formerly with of, now with for; as, he had no taste for study. I have no taste Of popular applause. Dryden.

Thy sustenance . . . serving to the appetite of the eater, tempered itself to every man's liking. Wisdom xvi. 21.

Not such as to inspire liking; unattractive; disagreeable. [Obs.] "The unlikely eld of me." Chaucer.

To form or shape by, or as by, attrition. Trials wear us into a liking of what, possibly, in the first essay, displeased us. Locke. To wear away, to consume; to impair, diminish, or destroy, by gradual attrition or decay. -- To wear off, to diminish or remove by attrition or slow decay; as, to wear off the nap of clot…