Prejudice, preconception.

[beachboy]

Is the word preconception as commonly used as the word prejudice in everyday English? How would you compare the use of these two words?

 

[GoesStation]

Google's Ngram viewer tells me prejudice is roughly 200 times as common as preconception. They're both reasonably common in the vocabulary of educated people. As dictionaries will tell you, they mean different things.

 

[jutfrank]

Although ngrams are an obvious way to compare frequency, I don't think a straight comparison is really what you're looking for.

You have to bear in mind the different meanings and the different uses of the words. For example, note that preconception is normally countable whereas prejudice is normally uncountable. Also that prejudice can be used as a verb whereas preconception cannot.

 

[Skrej]

I'd imagine that one reason for the discrepancy in usage is that 'prejudice' is frequently used when discussing racism, which of course is a common and recurring topic, especially in this day and age.

While 'preconception' could certainly be used in such conversations, it's just not going to be used anywhere as much as 'prejudice', due to the differences in meaning.