0 used to say that something that someone is given is better than what other people receive:
1 better than that given to others:
Some prisoners had apparently received preferential treatment.
2 better than that which is given to others:
It is not acceptable, in a modern company, to give preferential treatment to your relatives and friends.
Bananas from Caribbean countries have traditionally enjoyed preferential access to the EU.
preferential rates/terms/arrangements Members can get preferential terms on services such as free mortgage valuations and discounts on personal loans.
We are now ready to analyse the effect of the introduction of preferential trading.
Developing regions with smaller preferential quotas stand to gain more from market liberalisation.
Its concerns have less to do with profound causes than with distributive goods, such as political appointments or preferential benefits in public policies.
The real challenge in front of us, then, is to clarify conditions under which preferential systems can contribute to making ethnic problems less salient.
In practice, many utility companies and government agencies still refuse to honour the preferential policy.
In fact, the preferential transmission of the 7-repeat allele from parents to disorganized children was not significant.
It is possible, however, that preferential systems can have moderating effects in other contexts.
Discrepancies between this study and earlier investigations are discussed with reference to differences between habituation and preferential looking tasks.