incline: [13] Latin -clīnāre (a relative of English lean, but itself only ever recorded in compounds) meant ‘bend, lean’. Add to this the prefix in- and you had inclīnāre ‘lean towards’. This was originally borrowed into English via Old French encliner as encline – a form which survived until the 17th century, when the latinized incline began to take over. The metaphorical use of the word to indicate a person’s disposition or preference dates back to Roman times. => lean
