PREJ'UDICE, noun [Latin prejudicium; proe and judico.]

1. Prejudgment; an opinion or decision of mind, formed without due examination of the facts or arguments which are necessary to a just and impartial determination. It is used in a good or bad sense. Innumerable are the prejudices of education; we are accustomed to believe what we are taught, and to receive opinions from others without examining the grounds by which they can be supported. A man has strong prejudices in favor of his country or his party, or the church in which he has been educated; and often our prejudices are unreasonable. A judge should disabuse himself of prejudice in favor of either party in a suit.

My comfort is that their manifest prejudice to my cause will render their judgment of less authority.

2. A previous bent or bias of mind for or against any person or thing; prepossession.

There is an unaccountable prejudice to projectors of all kinds.

3. Mischief; hurt; damage; injury. Violent factions are a prejudice to the authority of the sovereign.

How plain this abuse is, and what prejudice it does to the understanding of the sacred Scriptures.

[This is a sense of the word too well established to be condemned.]

PREJ'UDICE, verb transitive To prepossess with unexamined opinions, or opinions formed without due knowledge of the facts and circumstances attending the question; to bias the mind by hasty and incorrect notions, and give it an unreasonable bent to one side or other of a cause.

Suffer not any beloved study to prejudice your mind so far as to despise all other learning.

1. To obstruct or injure by prejudices, or an undue previous bias of the mind; or to hurt; to damage; to diminish; to impair; in a very general sense. The advocate who attempts to prove too much, may prejudice his cause.

I am not to prejudice the cause of my fellow poets, though I abandon my own defense.