prejudice

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The act or state of holding unreasonable preconceived judgments or convictions.
• noun An adverse judgment or opinion formed unfairly or without knowledge of the facts.
• noun Irrational suspicion or hatred of a particular social group, such as a race or the adherents of a religion.
• noun Detriment or harm caused to a person, especially in a legal case.
• noun Preclusionary effect, preventing further pursuit of one's interests.
• transitive verb To fill with prejudice or cause to judge with prejudice. synonym: bias.
• transitive verb To affect detrimentally or harmfully by a judgment or act.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun An opinion or decision formed without due examination of the facts or arguments which are necessary to a just and impartial determination; a prejudgment; also, a state of mind which forms or induces prejudgment; bias or leaning, favorable or unfavorable; prepossession: when used absolutely, generally with an unfavorable meaning: as, a man of many prejudices; we should clear our minds of prejudice.
• noun Injury, as resulting from unfavorable prejudgment; detriment; hurt; damage.
• To implant a prejudice in the mind of; bias; give an unfair bent to.
• To create a prejudice against; injure by prejudice; hurt, impair, or damage in any way.
• Synonyms To prepossess, warp.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• transitive verb To cause to have prejudice; to prepossess with opinions formed without due knowledge or examination; to bias the mind of, by hasty and incorrect notions; to give an unreasonable bent to, as to one side or the other of a cause.
• transitive verb To obstruct or injure by prejudices, or by previous bias of the mind; hence, generally, to hurt; to damage; to injure; to impair.
• noun obsolete Foresight.
• noun An opinion or judgment formed without due examination; prejudgment; a leaning toward one side of a question from other considerations than those belonging to it; an unreasonable predilection for, or objection against, anything; especially, an opinion or leaning adverse to anything, without just grounds, or before sufficient knowledge.
• noun (Law) A bias on the part of judge, juror, or witness which interferes with fairness of judgment.
• noun Mischief; hurt; damage; injury; detriment.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun An adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge of the facts.
• noun Any preconceived opinion or feeling, whether positive or negative.
• noun An irrational hostile attitude, fear or hatred towards a particular group, race or religion.
• noun The damage caused by such fear or hatred.
• noun obsolete Knowledge formed in advance; foresight, presaging.
• verb transitive To have a negative impact on someone's position, chances etc.
• verb transitive To cause prejudice.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• verb influence (somebody's) opinion in advance
• noun a partiality that prevents objective consideration of an issue or situation
• verb disadvantage by prejudice