preferentialadj.n.

1754 tr. L. J. Plumard de Dangeul Remarks France & Great-Brit. 29 In France, the land-service is in all respects the preferential one [Fr. celui de préférence]; as in England, the marine.

1817 Johnson's Rep. (N.Y.) 14 152 An attachment, by operation of law, gives corporeality to an incorporeality, and thus, for the purpose of a kind of preferential justice, to prevent foreigners from drawing from this country, in satisfaction of their demands, debts liable to the claims of our citizens.

1849 H. Mayo On Truths Pop. Superstit. (1851) 76 Their preferential connection with this or that antecedent condition.

a1860 H. H. Wilson Ess. & Lect. (1862) I. 2 One division of some antiquity is the preferential appropriation of the four chief divinities to the four original castes.

1899 Times 13 Jan. 4/6 The wearing of the medals makes it appear that the children who wear them receive preferential treatment, which is contrary to the whole spirit of the education code.

1943 Sun (Baltimore) 1 Nov. 4/6 Purchasers of Rueckwanderer marks were credited at a designated German bank at a preferential rate of 4.1 reichmarks per dollar.

1976 National Observer (U.S.) 27 Nov. 3/1 Numerous educational and business programs across the country that give preferential treatment to minorities and women would be continued and probably expanded.

1991 Purchasing & Supply Managem. Apr. 10/3 The buyer is supplied with cars on preferential terms, with a guaranteed repurchase at the agreed residual value.

1843 Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. 54 644 Quoad the foreigner, the preferential duties make two prices therefore.

1898 Times 16 Aug. 7/3 Our traders are less exacting than those of other countries. They do not ask for preferential duties practically excluding other nations.

1903 H. E. Egerton Origin & Growth Eng. Colonies 189 When..the Canadian Government gave to English manufacturers a preferential treatment of 12½ per cent.,..the measure was received with genuine gratification in Great Britain.

1903 J. Chamberlain Speeches 21 Oct. 111 This matter of Preferential tariffs was before both Conferences.

1924 Times Trade & Engin. Suppl. 29 Nov. 237/3 British Columbian lumbermen maintain that there can be no valid reason for excluding their product from a British preferential tariff.

1962 Listener 26 July 125/2 The same preferential treatment obtaining between the six Common Marketeers.

1989 Daily Nation (Nairobi) 28 July 14/2 Mrs Kankasa urged member states of the Preferential Trade Area (PTA) to co-operate closely in agricultural development and research.

1870 Putnam's Mag. June 717/1 Mr. Hare's scheme is one which..may be called that of preferential voting. It ascertains the quota by dividing the whole number of voters by the whole number of representatives... This method, which we have called that of preferential voting, is also called by the Swiss reformers that of the electoral quotient.

1908 Westm. Gaz. 20 Aug. 2/1 The State of Western Australia..is now attempting..preferential voting in a simple form.

1926 C. G. Hoag & G. H. Hallett Proportional Representation x. 483 Such a preferential ballot is provided under the single transferable vote used as a majority system, known in Australia simply as ‘preferential voting’, in Great Britain and Canada as the ‘alternative vote’.

1955 C. R. Adrian Governing Urban Amer. iii. 61 During their heyday—the first and second decades of the present century—reformers sponsored other organizational and procedural changes: preferential voting, such as the Bucklin and Ware systems, which did not catch on, [etc.].

1976 J. Rogaly Parl. for People vi. 71 Two less satisfactory forms of preferential voting are the ‘second ballot’, used in France, and the ‘Alternative vote’.

2005 Vancouver Province (Nexis) Jan. a4 Voters would mark a preferential ballot, ranking their choice of candidates in order: 1, 2, 3, etc.

1895 K. Pearson in Proc. Royal Soc. 59 70 The author finds it necessary to emphasise the distinction between two types of sexual selection resulting from tribal and individual tastes, and leading respectively to a preferential and an assortative mating.

1920 R. H. Lowie Primitive Society (1921) ii. 35 Cross-cousin marriage, levirate, and sororate are by no means the only terms of preferential mating.

1971 R. Needham Rethinking Kinship & Marriage p. lxviii One should not ask whether a tribe has a prescriptive as opposed to a preferential marriage system.

1991 A. P. Cheater Social Anthropol. vi. 162 Preferential rules of sister exchange may create similarly cohesive, ongoing relations between specific descent groups.