Crossword-Solution: PREPOSSESSION 13 letters, 3 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 17

While she with the truest affection had been planning a most eligible connection for him, was it to be supposed that he could be all the time secretly engaged to another person!—such a suspicion could never have entered her head! If she suspected _any_ prepossession elsewhere, it could not be in _that_ quarter.

Prepossession is a mingled state of feeling and opinion in respect to some person or subject, which has laid hold of and occupied the mind previous to inquiry.

Some prepossession, such as starts amiss, by but a hair’s-breadth at the shoulder-blade, the arm o’ the feeler, dip he ne’er so brave; and so leads waveringly, lets fall wide o’ the mark his finger meant to find, and fix truth at the bottom, that deceptive speck.” The poet could hardly have employed a more effective metaphor in which to embody the idea of mental swerving.

The prepossession which our sex is supposed to entertain for the character of a soldier is, I know, a standing piece of raillery among the wits.

This latter part we found to concern us directly, though we knew it to be false; yet, as my partner said, very justly, if we had fallen into their hands, and they had had such a prepossession against us beforehand, it had been in vain for us to have defended ourselves, or to hope for any good quarter at their hands; especially considering that our accusers had been our judges, and that we could have expected nothing from them but what rage would have dictated, and an ungoverned passion have executed.