tendency

Etymology

Ultimately from Latin tendere / tendō.

noun

1. A likelihood of behaving in a particular way or going in a particular direction; a tending toward.
   Denim has a tendency to fade.
   I have a tendency to get bored after the first half an hour of a movie.
   There's a common tendency among first-game visitors to a casino to bet overcautiously.
2. (politics) An organised unit or faction within a larger political organisation.
   Mao launched the struggle against the vulgar materialist tendency within the party as early as 1937. 1974, James Boggs, Grace Lee Boggs, Revolution and Evolution, NYU Press, page 134
   In stark contrast to the Europeanist tendency within the party and the Suez Group, this group had a short history. 1997, S. Onslow, Backbench Debate within the Conservative Party and its Influence on British Foreign Policy, 1948-57, Springer, page 234
   It reinforced the position of the conformist tendency within the party, since the majority of the candidates were old politicians, many of them members of Papandreou's centre-left CU faction back in the mid-1960s. 2013, Richard Gillespie, Lourdes Lopez Nieto, Michael Waller, Factional Politics and Democratization, Routledge, page 83