natural
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: enpr: năchʹ(ə)rəl
ipa: /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹəl/
note: Indic
ipa: /ˈnatʃ(ʊ)rəl/
note: Indic
ipa: /ˈnetʃ(ʊ)rəl/
rhymes: -ætʃəɹəl
rhymes: -ætʃɹəl
Forms: form: more natural
form: most natural
form: naturall
form: nat'ral
Etymology: Inherited from Middle English natural, borrowed from Old French natural, naturel, from Latin nātūrālis, from nātus, the perfect participle of nāscor (“be born”, verb). Displaced native Old English ġecynde. By surface analysis, nature + -al.
Senses: examples: text: The natural Love of Life gave me some inward Motions of Joy.
ref: 1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], London: […] Benj[amin] Motte, […], →OCLC, (please specify |part=I to IV):
text: With strong natural sense, and rare force of will, he found himself, when first his mind began to open, a fatherless and motherless child, the chief of a great but depressed and disheartened party, and the heir to vast and indefinite pretensions, which excited the dread and aversion of the oligarchy then supreme in the United Provinces.
ref: 1858, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter VII, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume II, Longman et al., page 419:
text: A South African Uber driver is causing excitement with his impressive operatic singing but, however much natural talent you have, it is a long road to La Scala.
ref: 2019 July 10, The Guardian:
glosses: Existing in nature.
Existing in the nature of a person or thing; innate, not acquired or learned.
examples: text: The species will be under threat if its natural habitat is destroyed.
glosses: Existing in nature.
Normally associated with a particular person or thing; inherently related to the nature of a thing or creature.
examples: text: It's natural for business to be slow on Tuesdays.
text: His prison sentence was the natural consequence of a life of crime.
text: What can be more natural or more moving than the circumſtances in which he deſcribes the behaviour of thoſe women who had loſt their huſbands on this fatal day ?
ref: 1711 May 25, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, The Spectator, volume I, number 74, page 333:
glosses: Existing in nature.
As expected; reasonable, normal; naturally arising from the given circumstances.
examples: text: The US supreme court has ruled unanimously that natural human genes cannot be patented, a decision that scientists and civil rights campaigners said removed a major barrier to patient care and medical innovation.
ref: 2013 June 21, Karen McVeigh, “US rules human genes can't be patented”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 2, page 10:
glosses: Existing in nature.
Formed by nature; not manufactured or created by artificial processes.
examples: text: She died of natural causes.
text: Cancer patient David Paterson, 81, was close to a natural death when he was suffocated by Heather Davidson, 54, in the bedroom of his care home in North Yorkshire on 11 February.
ref: 2015 June 5, The Guardian:
glosses: Existing in nature.
Pertaining to death brought about by disease or old age, rather than by violence, accident etc.
examples: text: Mr. Campion appeared suitably impressed and she warmed to him. He was very easy to talk to with those long clown lines in his pale face, a natural goon, born rather too early she suspected.
ref: 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 5, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:
glosses: Existing in nature.
Having an innate ability to fill a given role or profession, or display a specified character.
topics: mathematics
sciences
glosses: Existing in nature.
Designating a standard trigonometric function of an angle, as opposed to the logarithmic function.
topics: algebra
mathematics
sciences
glosses: Existing in nature.
Closed under submodules, direct sums, and injective hulls.
examples: text: There's a wrong note here: it should be C natural instead of C sharp.
topics: entertainment
lifestyle
music
glosses: Existing in nature.
Neither sharp nor flat. Denoted ♮.
examples: text: Natural food is healthier than processed food.
glosses: Existing in nature.
Containing no artificial or man-made additives; especially (of food) containing no colourings, flavourings or preservatives.
glosses: Existing in nature.
Pertaining to a decoration that preserves or enhances the appearance of the original material; not stained or artificially coloured.
glosses: Existing in nature.
Pertaining to a fabric still in its undyed state, or to the colour of undyed fabric.
topics: dice
games
glosses: Existing in nature.
Pertaining to a dice roll before bonuses or penalties have been applied to the result.
topics: bodybuilding
hobbies
lifestyle
sports
glosses: Existing in nature.
Not having used anabolic steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs.
antonyms: enhanced
topics: bridge
games
glosses: Existing in nature.
Bidding in an intuitive way that reflects one's actual hand.
antonyms: artificial
conventional
examples: text: Whom should he follow but his naturall king.
ref: c. 1591–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]:
text: I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to my natural lord and king, if thou wilt also perform thy part, the which thou owest me.
ref: 1816 June – 1817 April/May (date written), [Mary Shelley], Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] [Macdonald and Son] for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, published 1 January 1818, →OCLC:
glosses: Pertaining to birth or descent; native.
Having a given status (especially of authority) by virtue of birth.
examples: text: [M]y Mother was the natural Daughter of a Scotch Peer by an italian Opera-girl […].
ref: 1790, Jane Austen, “Love and Freindship”, in Juvenilia:
text: “What! do not you know who Miss Williams is? I am sure you must have heard of her before. She is a relation of the Colonel’s, my dear; a very near relation. We will not say how near, for fear of shocking the young ladies.” Then lowering her voice a little, she said to Elinor, “She is his natural daughter.” “Indeed!” “Oh! yes; and as like him as she can stare. I dare say the Colonel will leave her all his fortune.” Lady Middleton’s delicacy was shocked; an in order to banish so improper a subject as the mention of a natural daughter, she actually took the trouble of saying something herself about the weather.
ref: 1811, Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility:
text: Mrs Taft […] had got it into her head that Mr Lydgate was a natural son of Bulstrode's, a fact which seemed to justify her suspicions of evangelical laymen.
ref: 1872, George Eliot, Middlemarch, Book III, chapter 26:
text: Dr Erasmus Darwin set up his two illegitimate daughters as the governesses of a school, noting that natural children often had happier (because less pretentious) upbringings than legitimate.
ref: 1990, Roy Porter, English Society in the 18th Century, Penguin, published 1991, page 264:
glosses: Pertaining to birth or descent; native.
Related genetically but not legally to one's father; born out of wedlock, illegitimate.
examples: text: The first-born in every house, “from the first-born of the Pharaoh on the throne, to the first-born of the captive in the dungeon,” unaccountably found himself enlisted in the ranks of this new power, and estranged from his natural friends.
ref: 1843, John Henry Newman, “The Kingdom of the Saints”, in Parochial Sermons, 4th edition, volume II, J. G. F. & J. Rivington, pages 264–5:
glosses: Pertaining to birth or descent; native.
Related by birth; genetically related.
Synonyms: sense: exists in an ecosystem
word: innate
word: native
sense: as expected
word: inevitable
word: necessary
word: reasonable
sense: without adjustment
word: raw
sense: connected by consanguinity
word: consanguine
sense: born out of wedlock
word: illegitimate
sense: without a condom
word: condomless
Derived terms: all-natural
Cartesian natural transformation
conatural
connatural
contranatural
cosmological natural selection
counternatural
dinatural
extra-natural
hypernatural
infranatural
liquefied natural gas
liquid natural gas
liquified natural gas
metanatural
naptural
natlang
natty
natural advantages
natural aging
natural birth
natural-born
natural breast
natural burial
natural business year
natural causes
natural child
natural childbirth
natural convection
natural daughter
natural death
natural deduction
natural disaster
natural economy
naturalesque
natural family planning
natural fiber
natural fibre
natural food
natural fool
natural frequency
natural function
natural gas
natural gas liquid
natural gasoline
natural gender
natural grammar
natural harmonic
natural historian
natural history
natural increase rate
naturalise
naturalize
natural isomorphism
naturalist
naturalistic
natural join
natural key
natural killer
natural killer cell
natural language
natural language processing
natural language understanding
natural law
natural life sentence
natural light
natural log
natural logarithm
naturally
natural magic
natural medicine
natural minor scale
natural monopoly
naturalness
natural number
natural numbers
natural numbers object
natural parts
natural person
natural philosopher
natural philosophy
natural preserve
natural price
natural product
natural protection
natural religion
natural reserve
natural resource
natural resources
natural right
natural rubber
natural scale
natural science
natural scientist
natural selection
natural sherry
natural slope
natural son
natural steel
natural stupidity
natural theologian
natural theology
natural transformation
natural trumpet
natural unit
natural uranium
natural user interface
natural virtue
natural vowel
natural wastage
natural world
nonnatural
paranatural
postnatural
preternatural
semi-natural
seminatural
subnatural
supranatural
ultranatural
ultra-natural
unnatural
Related terms: antenatal
au naturel
innate
nascent
natal
native
nativism
nativity
nativization
naturalism
naturism
prenatal