bias

Meanings

Noun

• Inclination towards something.
• The diagonal line between warp and weft in a woven fabric.
• A wedge-shaped piece of cloth taken out of a garment (such as the waist of a dress) to diminish its circumference.
• A voltage or current applied to an electronic device, such as a transistor electrode, to move its operating point to a desired part of its transfer function.
• The difference between the expectation of the sample estimator and the true population value, which reduces the representativeness of the estimator by systematically distorting it.
• In the games of crown green bowls and lawn bowls: a weight added to one side of a bowl so that as it rolls, it will follow a curved rather than a straight path; the oblique line followed by such a bowl; the lopsided shape or structure of such a bowl. In lawn bowls, the curved course is caused only by the shape of the bowl. The use of weights is prohibited.
• A person's favourite member of a K-pop band.

Verb

• To place bias upon; to influence.
• To give a bias to.

Adjective

• Inclined to one side; swelled on one side.
• Cut slanting or diagonally, as cloth.

Adverb

• In a slanting manner; crosswise; obliquely; diagonally.

Origin

• c. 1520 in the sense "oblique line". As a technical term in the game of bowls c. 1560, whence the figurative use (c. 1570).
• From French biais, adverbially ("sideways, askance, against the grain") c. 1250, as a noun ("oblique angle, slant") from the late 16th century.
• The French word is likely from Old Occitan biais, itself of obscure origin, most likely from an unattested Latin *biaxius "with two axes".