Definition
Prone means tilted toward an outcome, almost always a bad one — accident-prone, prone to error, prone to flooding. The image is literally one of leaning: from the Latin pronus, 'leaning forward', as a slope leans downhill and lets everything slide the same way. To be prone to something is to carry a built-in inclination toward it, so it happens more easily than it should. A precarious structure is prone to collapse; a brittle one is prone to crack.
Examples
- Low-lying coastal towns are especially prone to flooding.
- When he is tired, he is prone to careless mistakes.
- Rushed work is prone to error in a way that careful work is not.
Collocations
prone to error·accident-prone·prone to flooding·more prone to
Synonyms
liable·susceptible·inclined·disposed·apt
Antonyms
resistant·immune·resilient
Word family
proneness (noun)
In TOEFL & IELTS
TOEFL/IELTS passages on health, geography, and psychology use 'prone to' for vulnerabilities — 'prone to disease/error/flooding'. In Writing, 'X is prone to Y' is a clean way to state a tendency. Note the fixed compound 'accident-prone' and the preposition: prone *to* something. (A second, literal sense — lying face-down — appears in TOEFL science texts.)