Prejudice Meaning: Definition, Types, Examples & Legal Use

Someone hears a coworker say a neighbor “has a prejudice against dogs” and wonders whether the word fits. The prejudice meaning covers more ground than most people expect, from social attitudes to courtroom rulings.

Most readers know prejudice as an unfair opinion about a group, formed before any real contact. That sense dominates daily speech, but lawyers, historians, and novelists use the word in other ways too. Hidden prejudice often sits behind polite words, which is why the implicit vs complicit distinction matters for writers.

This guide explains the definition, origin, pronunciation, word forms, types, and legal uses of prejudice. It also compares the word with bias, stereotype, and discrimination, and closes with mistakes, tips, and a checklist.

Quick Answer: What Is the Prejudice Meaning?

Prejudice means an unfair opinion about a person or group, formed before the facts or real experience. Most often, the word points to dislike based on race, religion, gender, age, or background. In law, prejudice carries a separate sense, which is harm or damage to a person’s legal rights. Context decides which meaning applies, so readers should check the setting before choosing a definition.

What Does Prejudice Mean in Simple Words?

Prejudice is a judgment that arrives before the evidence does, and it rarely waits for a second look. A person decides what someone else is like without meeting them, listening to them, or checking facts. The opinion usually rests on a label, such as nationality, skin color, faith, accent, or social class.

In simple words, prejudice means judging people before knowing them, and usually judging them unfairly.

Major English dictionaries describe prejudice in two main ways, and both senses stay active in modern writing. The first sense covers a preconceived opinion that lacks good reason or actual experience behind it. The second sense covers harm or injury, especially harm to someone’s legal rights or interests. The opinion sense also allows a favorable prejudice, such as an unearned preference for a hometown team.

Prejudice Meaning at a Glance

The table below gathers the basic facts about the word in one place for quick reference:

Feature	Detail
Part of speech	Noun and verb
Pronunciation	/ˈprɛdʒ.ə.dɪs/
Latin root	praejudicium
Core idea	Judgment before facts
Plural	Prejudices
Adjective forms	Prejudiced, prejudicial
Opposite idea	Open mind, fairness

The table shows how one short word carries a noun, a verb, and two separate adjective forms.

How Should Readers Pronounce Prejudice?

Speakers stress the first syllable and say the word in three beats: PREJ, uh, dis. The middle vowel sounds soft and short, close to the “a” sound in the word “about.” A common slip turns the first syllable into “pree,” which matches the related verb “prejudge” instead. British and American speakers pronounce the word almost the same way, with only small vowel differences.

Why Does the Prejudice Meaning Matter?

Precise vocabulary matters most when a word carries moral weight, and prejudice carries a great deal of it. Calling someone prejudiced accuses them of unfair thinking, so a careless label can damage reputations fast. Underusing the word creates the opposite problem, because softer language can hide real unfairness from readers.

Students meet the word in history, sociology, and literature classes, often in essays about civil rights. Journalists use it to describe hate crimes, hiring studies, and public surveys about social attitudes. Lawyers and paralegals need the harm sense daily, since court filings and contracts repeat it constantly.

Where Does the Word Prejudice Come From?

The word prejudice traces back to the Latin noun praejudicium, built from the parts prae and judicium. Prae means “before,” and judicium means “judgment,” so the original idea was a judgment made beforehand. Roman legal language used praejudicium for a preliminary ruling or a precedent that affected later decisions.

prae (before) + judicium (judgment) → praejudicium → Old French prejudice → English prejudice

The word passed through Old French before it reached English around the year 1300. Etymology references usually list the harm or damage sense among the earliest English uses of the word. The opinion sense, meaning a view formed before the facts, grew common over the following centuries.

This history explains why lawyers and everyday speakers use prejudice differently in modern English. Legal English kept the old harm sense, while ordinary English favored the opinion sense over time. Both meanings share the same root idea of something decided too early or at someone’s cost.

Prejudice as a Noun, Verb, and Adjective

Prejudice as a Noun

As a noun, prejudice names the unfair opinion itself or the general habit of holding such opinions. Writers use it as a countable noun for specific attitudes and an uncountable noun for wider problems. “She has a prejudice against city people” uses the countable form for one particular attitude. “The report found deep prejudice in hiring” uses the uncountable form for a broad social pattern.

Prejudice as a Verb

As a verb, prejudice has two jobs, and both appear often in news reports and legal writing. The first job means to make someone biased, as in “The headline prejudiced readers against the defendant.” The second job means to harm or weaken something, as in “The delay could prejudice the company’s claim.” Writers rarely use the verb in casual conversation, so it sounds formal in most everyday settings.

Prejudiced vs Prejudicial

Prejudiced describes a person or attitude that holds unfair opinions about other people or groups. Prejudicial describes something that causes harm or unfair bias, often in legal or official contexts. A prejudiced juror holds a bias, while prejudicial evidence might create that same bias in other jurors.

Word	Meaning	Example
Prejudice	The unfair opinion or harm	Prejudice harms communities
Prejudiced	Holding unfair opinions	A prejudiced manager
Prejudicial	Causing harm or bias	Prejudicial evidence
Prejudge	Judge before the facts	Prejudge a new hire

Each form carries the same root idea, but only prejudiced describes a person’s attitude directly.

Key Characteristics of Prejudice

Psychologists and dictionary editors point to six features that separate prejudice from ordinary opinions:

• Prejudice forms before real contact, so the opinion rests on labels instead of personal experience.
• Prejudice targets groups first, and individuals then receive the group judgment without a fair hearing.
• Prejudice resists new evidence, so people often dismiss facts that challenge their existing views.
• Prejudice carries emotion, usually dislike, fear, or contempt, along with the unfair belief itself.
• Prejudice can stay hidden, because many people hold biased views they never say out loud.
• Prejudice spreads through families, schools, media, and peer groups long before people notice it.

Types of Prejudice

Prejudice can target almost any group trait, and each common form carries its own familiar label. Researchers usually group the main types by the trait that triggers the unfair judgment.

Type	Target trait	Common label
Racial	Race or ethnicity	Racism
Gender	Sex or gender	Sexism
Age	Older or younger people	Ageism
Religious	Faith or belief	Religious intolerance
Sexual orientation	Gay or bisexual people	Homophobia
Disability	Physical or mental disability	Ableism
National	Country of origin	Xenophobia
Class	Income or social status	Classism
Appearance	Weight, height, looks	Lookism
Linguistic	Accent or dialect	Accent bias

The labels in the last column usually describe prejudice combined with unfair treatment or social systems.

Racial and Ethnic Prejudice

Racial prejudice judges people by skin color, ancestry, or ethnic background before any personal contact happens. Researchers study this form closely, because it often links to discrimination in housing, jobs, and education.

Gender Prejudice

Gender prejudice assumes that men or women share fixed abilities, interests, or roles in life. A hiring manager who doubts a female engineer before reading her résumé shows this form clearly.

Age Prejudice

Age prejudice treats older or younger people as less capable, less modern, or less serious than others. Comments such as “older workers cannot learn software” or “teenagers never take responsibility” reflect this attitude.

Religious Prejudice

Religious prejudice targets people for their faith, their lack of faith, or their religious customs. It can appear as mockery of dress, suspicion of worship practices, or exclusion from community events.

Class and Economic Prejudice

Class prejudice judges people by income, job title, neighborhood, or level of formal education. A recruiter who assumes a poorer applicant lacks discipline, before reviewing any record, shows this form.

Linguistic and Accent Prejudice

Accent prejudice judges a speaker’s intelligence or honesty by the way that speaker pronounces words. Listeners sometimes rate the same message lower when a speaker uses a regional or foreign accent.

Disability Prejudice

Disability prejudice assumes that people with disabilities lack skill, independence, or ambition in daily life. Talking to a wheelchair user’s companion instead of the user offers a familiar everyday example.

Explicit vs Implicit Prejudice

Explicit prejudice is the open kind, which people state, accept, and sometimes defend in public. Implicit prejudice works below awareness and steers quick judgments without the person noticing the influence. Someone can sincerely reject racism in conversation and still react with hidden bias during split second choices.

Researchers study implicit attitudes with timed tests, such as the Implicit Association Test from Project Implicit. Results vary between sessions, so specialists treat a single score with caution instead of as proof.

Feature	Explicit prejudice	Implicit prejudice
Awareness	Conscious	Often unconscious
Expression	Open statements	Quick reactions and choices
Example	Insulting a group	Avoiding a seat beside someone
Measurement	Surveys and interviews	Timed association tests

Both forms cause harm, but implicit prejudice proves harder to spot because the person holding it rarely notices.

How Does Prejudice Form?

Nobody arrives in the world with prejudice, so every unfair attitude has a learned source somewhere. Psychologist Gordon Allport studied these sources in his 1954 book, The Nature of Prejudice. His work still guides research on contact between groups and the reduction of hostility today.

Learning From Family and Community

Children absorb attitudes from parents, relatives, and neighbors long before they meet the groups in question. A single dismissive joke at a dinner table can plant a view that lasts for decades afterward.

Limited Contact

People with little direct contact with a group often fill the gap with rumors and media images. Allport proposed that equal and cooperative contact between groups can reduce prejudice under the right conditions.

Group Identity

Humans tend to favor their own group, a pattern that researchers describe with the term ingroup bias. That preference can turn into suspicion of outsiders when competition for jobs, land, or status grows.

Fear and Uncertainty

Economic hardship and social change often raise anxiety, and anxious people look for simple explanations. Blaming an outside group offers an easy story, which explains why prejudice often rises during crises.

Media and Repetition

Repeated images of one group in a single role train audiences to expect that role everywhere. A news cycle that shows a community only in crime stories gives viewers a narrow and false picture.

Prejudice Meaning in Law

Legal English uses prejudice in its older sense of harm, damage, or the loss of legal rights. The word appears in court orders, contracts, and settlement letters, and it rarely refers to bigotry there.

Dismissed With Prejudice vs Without Prejudice

A court that dismisses a case with prejudice bars the plaintiff from filing the same claim again. A dismissal without prejudice leaves the door open, so the plaintiff can fix the problems and refile later. Judges usually choose the first option after a final ruling and the second option for fixable errors.

Phrase	Meaning	Can the case return?
Dismissed with prejudice	Final dismissal	No
Dismissed without prejudice	Dismissal with rights kept	Usually yes
Without prejudice to	Without harming a right	Not applicable

The word “with” closes a case for good, while the word “without” keeps the plaintiff’s options alive.

“Without Prejudice” in Letters and Negotiations

In British and Commonwealth practice, lawyers mark settlement letters “without prejudice” to protect frank offers. The label usually keeps those offers away from the judge if the negotiation fails and the dispute continues. Rules differ between countries, so anyone facing a real dispute should check local practice with a qualified lawyer.

Prejudicial Evidence

Courts can exclude evidence when its unfair effect on a jury outweighs its value as proof. Lawyers call such material prejudicial, because it could push jurors toward an emotional verdict over a reasoned one.

The Phrase “Without Prejudice To”

Contracts often state that one clause applies “without prejudice to” another clause or another right. The phrase means the first clause does not limit or cancel the right that the sentence names afterward.

Prejudice vs Bias vs Stereotype vs Discrimination

These four words often appear together, but each one names a different part of the same problem. A stereotype is a belief, prejudice is an attitude, and discrimination is an action based on both. Bias sits wider than all three terms and covers any tilt in judgment, including tilts about objects.

Term	What it is	Example
Stereotype	A generalized belief	“All teens are lazy”
Prejudice	An unfair attitude	Disliking teens on sight
Discrimination	Unfair treatment	Refusing to hire teens
Bias	Any slanted judgment	Favoring a familiar brand

The order runs from belief to attitude to action, which helps writers pick the accurate word each time.

Prejudice vs Bias

Bias describes any leaning that tilts judgment, and it can involve products, ideas, sources, or methods. Prejudice almost always involves people and carries a negative emotional charge toward them. Every prejudice counts as a bias, but plenty of biases have nothing to do with prejudice at all.

Prejudice vs Discrimination

Prejudice lives in the mind, while discrimination appears in actions, decisions, and official policies. A landlord who dislikes a group holds a prejudice, but refusing them an apartment counts as discrimination. Laws in most countries target discrimination, because governments can measure actions more easily than private thoughts.

Prejudice vs Stereotype

A stereotype states a fixed belief about a group, such as “engineers lack social skills.” Prejudice adds emotion and judgment to that belief, turning a lazy assumption into an unfair personal attitude.

Prejudice vs Bigotry

Bigotry describes strong, stubborn, and often hostile prejudice that refuses any reasoned challenge. All bigotry involves prejudice, but mild or unconscious prejudice usually falls short of bigotry.

Prejudice vs Caution: Where Is the Line?

Not every negative expectation counts as prejudice, because some caution rests on real and specific evidence. A hiker who avoids a trail after three bear sightings shows caution, and nobody would call it prejudice. The difference lies in the source, since caution follows facts while prejudice follows labels and rumors. The leary or leery guide explains the correct spelling for this careful and watchful attitude.

A simple test helps here, which involves asking whether the expectation would change after meeting the actual person. If new facts change the view, it was caution, but a view that ignores facts signals prejudice.

Synonyms and Antonyms of Prejudice

Writers can swap prejudice for a close synonym, but each option carries a slightly different shade of meaning. The table pairs common synonyms with their best use and a matching antonym:

Synonym	Best use	Antonym
Bias	General slanted judgment	Neutrality
Bigotry	Strong hostile prejudice	Tolerance
Intolerance	Refusal to accept differences	Acceptance
Partiality	Unfair preference	Impartiality
Preconception	Idea formed in advance	Open mind
Discrimination	Unfair treatment	Equality
Detriment	Legal or practical harm	Benefit

Bias and preconception work in mild contexts, while bigotry suits only strong and openly hostile attitudes.

Prejudice in Literature: Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen published Pride and Prejudice in 1813, and the title remains a famous literary use. The novel follows Elizabeth Bennet, who forms a harsh opinion of Mr. Darcy after one rude remark. Her early judgment fits the prejudice meaning neatly, because she decides his character before learning the facts. Darcy shows the matching flaw of pride, looking down on Elizabeth’s family for their social rank. Both characters change their views once real evidence arrives, which gives the novel its lasting lesson.

Austen’s title points to an older and gentler use of prejudice than most modern readers expect. In her era, the word often described a hasty personal judgment about one individual, with no group involved.

Examples of Prejudice in Sentences

The examples below show each main sense of the word in natural, everyday sentences:

Sense	Example sentence
Unfair opinion (noun)	Her prejudice against tattoos faded after she met the new nurse.
General problem (noun)	Schools run workshops to reduce prejudice among students.
Positive preference	He admits a prejudice in favor of handwritten letters.
Make biased (verb)	Leaked rumors prejudiced the jury before the trial began.
Harm (verb)	Missing the deadline could prejudice the tenant’s claim.
Legal phrase	The judge dismissed the case without prejudice.
Adjective (person)	The prejudiced remark upset everyone in the meeting.
Adjective (legal)	The lawyer objected to the prejudicial photographs.

Most sentences use the opinion sense, but legal writing keeps the harm sense active and common.

A Real World Example of Prejudice

A small marketing firm receives two equally strong résumés for one open graphic design role. The manager skips the second applicant because her name suggests a foreign background to him. That snap decision shows prejudice, since the manager judged skill from a name instead of a portfolio. Refusing the interview turns the attitude into discrimination, which employment laws in many countries forbid. A blind review process, with names hidden from reviewers, would give both designers an equal hearing.

How Can People Reduce Prejudice?

Research on prejudice reduction points to several methods that work best when people practice them consistently. The four methods below appear often in psychology studies and workplace training programs.

Meaningful Contact

Cooperative projects with members of other groups replace secondhand images with direct personal experience. Allport’s contact hypothesis suggests that equal status and shared goals make contact most useful.

Perspective Taking

Reading memoirs, listening to personal stories, and picturing another person’s day can weaken quick judgments. These habits turn a faceless group into individual people with names, histories, and reasons.

Slowing Down Decisions

Quick choices rely on mental shortcuts, and those shortcuts often carry hidden prejudice into hiring or grading. Structured interviews, scoring rubrics, and blind reviews give each person the same fair standard.

Checking Language

Labels such as “those people” turn individuals into a faceless group and make prejudice easier to hold. Naming specific people and specific actions keeps attention on facts instead of broad categories.

Benefits of Recognizing Prejudice Early

Spotting prejudice early brings clear gains for individuals, schools, and workplaces alike:

• Early recognition helps people question unfair opinions before those opinions harden into lasting habits.
• Workplaces that spot prejudice early make fairer hiring decisions and keep talented staff longer.
• Students who recognize prejudice write sharper essays about history, literature, and social issues.
• Writers who name prejudice accurately avoid false accusations and also avoid hiding real unfairness.

How to Use Prejudice Correctly

Writers can avoid most errors with prejudice by following five short steps before they publish anything.

Step 1: Identify the Sense

Decide whether the sentence describes an unfair opinion, a legal harm, or a positive preference. The surrounding words usually reveal the sense, especially terms such as “court,” “claim,” or “rights.”

Step 2: Pick the Correct Word Form

Use prejudice for the noun or verb, prejudiced for a biased person, and prejudicial for harmful material. Swapping these forms produces errors that editors and teachers catch within seconds of reading.

Step 3: Choose the Right Preposition

Pair prejudice with “against” for negative attitudes and with “in favor of” for positive preferences. “Toward” and “towards” also work, but “against” sounds clearest in formal and academic writing.

Step 4: Match the Register

Prejudice sounds formal, so casual writing sometimes needs a lighter word, such as “bias” or “assumption.” Academic, legal, and news writing can use prejudice freely, because readers there expect precise vocabulary.

Step 5: Check the Spelling

Spell it p, r, e, j, u, d, i, c, e, with no extra “d” before the “j.” Reading the word aloud in three beats, PREJ, uh, dis, helps writers catch typos before publishing.

Common Mistakes With Prejudice

1. Spelling It “Predjudice”

Writers often add a “d” before the “j,” because the related word “judge” begins with that sound. The correct spelling keeps only one “d,” placed after the “u,” exactly as the word prejudice shows.

2. Writing “He Is Prejudice”

Prejudice works as a noun or verb, so it cannot describe a person directly after “is.” The correct sentence reads “He is prejudiced,” with the adjective form that ends in the letter “d.”

3. Mixing Up Prejudiced and Prejudicial

Prejudiced describes a person’s biased attitude, while prejudicial describes something that causes harm or unfair bias. Calling a witness “prejudicial” instead of “prejudiced” changes the meaning and confuses legal readers.

4. Using Prejudice for Any Dislike

Casual speakers sometimes stretch prejudice to cover foods, pets, or weather, as in the dog example earlier. Careful writing keeps the word for unfair judgments about people, groups, or someone’s legal rights.

5. Treating “Without Prejudice” as a Magic Phrase

Some people add “without prejudice” to ordinary emails, hoping the label will protect anything they write. The phrase usually protects genuine settlement talks only, so casual use offers little or no protection.

6. Confusing Prejudice With Discrimination

Prejudice describes an attitude, and discrimination describes an action that treats people unfairly in practice. Writing “the company’s prejudice policy” mixes the two ideas, because a policy acts and so discriminates.

Tips for Remembering the Prejudice Meaning

These memory tips help learners hold onto each sense of the word and choose the right form:

• Split the word into “pre” and “judice,” and read it as “judging before the facts arrive.”
• Link the noun to the adjective by adding a “d” whenever the word describes a person.
• Connect prejudicial with “judicial,” since both words often appear in court and legal writing.
• Picture Elizabeth Bennet misjudging Mr. Darcy, which shows a hasty personal judgment in action.
• Test each use by asking whether the sentence involves people, groups, or someone’s legal rights.
• Recall the chain of belief, attitude, and action for stereotype, prejudice, and discrimination.

Test Yourself: Prejudice Practice Questions

Short practice questions help learners check whether they can spot each sense of prejudice correctly. Try these five sentences, and decide which word form or phrase completes each one best.

Sentence	Correct answer
The court dismissed the claim ___ prejudice, so it cannot return.	with
The ___ juror refused to listen to the defense.	prejudiced
The judge blocked the ___ photographs from the trial.	prejudicial
Her ___ against modern art faded after one gallery visit.	prejudice (noun)
Late filing could ___ the tenant’s rights.	prejudice (verb)

Learners who answer all five correctly can handle every common form of the word in writing.

Prejudice Meaning Checklist

Run through this checklist before publishing any sentence that uses prejudice or its related forms:

• Confirm the sentence uses the opinion sense, the legal harm sense, or the positive preference sense.
• Check that prejudiced describes people and prejudicial describes harmful evidence, statements, or actions.
• Verify the spelling carries no extra “d” before the “j” anywhere in the word.
• Pick “against” for negative attitudes and “in favor of” for positive preferences in formal writing.
• Separate prejudice from discrimination whenever the sentence describes an action instead of an attitude.
• Replace prejudice with bias when the slant involves products, ideas, or methods instead of people.
• Keep legal phrases such as “without prejudice” for genuine legal or settlement contexts only.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is the Simple Prejudice Meaning?

The simple prejudice meaning is an unfair opinion about a person or group formed before knowing the facts. It usually involves dislike based on traits such as race, religion, gender, age, or class.

What Is an Example of Prejudice?

A manager who assumes older applicants cannot learn new software shows prejudice before seeing any evidence. The judgment rests on age alone, so it fits the standard definition of prejudice exactly.

Is Prejudice Always Negative?

Prejudice is usually negative, because the word mostly describes unfair dislike or suspicion toward a group. Dictionaries also allow a favorable prejudice, such as an unearned preference for a hometown or brand.

What Is the Difference Between Prejudice and Discrimination?

Prejudice is an unfair attitude that lives in the mind and may never show in behavior. Discrimination is the action that follows, such as refusing a job or home because of group membership.

What Does Prejudice Mean in Law?

In law, prejudice means harm or damage to a person’s rights, claims, or legal position in a case. A case dismissed with prejudice cannot return, while a plaintiff can usually refile after dismissal without prejudice.

Where Does the Word Prejudice Come From?

Prejudice comes from the Latin praejudicium, which joins prae, meaning before, and judicium, meaning judgment. The word reached English through Old French around the year 1300, with the harm sense appearing early.

What Are the Main Types of Prejudice?

The main types of prejudice include racial, gender, age, religious, class, disability, and accent prejudice. Each type judges people by one group trait instead of their personal qualities or actual actions.

What Is Implicit Prejudice?

Implicit prejudice is an unfair attitude that works below conscious awareness and influences quick decisions. People holding implicit prejudice may sincerely reject bias while still reacting differently to certain groups.

Is It Prejudice or Prejudiced?

Use prejudice as a noun or verb and prejudiced as the adjective that describes a biased person. “She is prejudiced” is correct, while “She is prejudice” is a common grammar mistake in English writing.

What Is the Opposite of Prejudice?

The opposite of prejudice is an open mind, which judges people only after fair and real experience. Close antonyms include tolerance, impartiality, fairness, and acceptance, depending on the context of the sentence.

Key Takeaways

• Prejudice means an unfair opinion about a person or group formed before any facts arrive.
• The word comes from Latin praejudicium, which combines the ideas of before and judgment.
• Legal English keeps the older sense of prejudice, meaning harm or damage to someone’s rights.
• Prejudiced describes a biased person, while prejudicial describes harmful evidence, statements, or actions.
• Stereotypes are beliefs, prejudice is an attitude, and discrimination is the unfair action that follows.
• Bias covers any slanted judgment, but prejudice almost always involves people and negative emotion.
• Explicit prejudice appears openly, whereas implicit prejudice works quietly below a person’s conscious awareness.
• Common types include racial, gender, age, religious, class, disability, and linguistic prejudice.
• A case dismissed with prejudice ends for good, while dismissal without prejudice usually allows refiling.
• Caution follows specific evidence, while prejudice follows labels and resists change after new facts.
• Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice shows prejudice as a hasty personal judgment about one man.
• Correct spelling places no extra “d” before the “j,” so writers should avoid “predjudice.”

Final Thoughts

The prejudice meaning centers on judgment that comes too early, whether about people or about legal rights. In daily speech, the word names unfair opinions about groups, and in court it names real harm. Writers who know both senses can choose between prejudice, prejudiced, prejudicial, and bias with confidence.

Careful word choice matters here, because prejudice describes real harm to real people and whole communities. Pick the precise form, pair it with the right preposition, and save the word for fitting situations. Explore more English vocabulary guides on Word Confusion to clear up other confusing words.