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synthetic

Syllabification: (syn·thet·ic)
Pronunciation: /sinˈTHetik/
Translate synthetic | into French | into German | into Italian | into Spanish
Definition of synthetic

adjective

  • 1(of a substance) made by chemical synthesis, especially to imitate a natural product:synthetic rubber
  • (of an emotion or action) not genuine; insincere:their tears are a bit synthetic
  • 2 Logic (of a proposition) having truth or falsity determinable by recourse to experience. Compare with analytic.
  • 3 Linguistics (of a language) characterized by the use of inflections rather than word order to express grammatical structure. Contrasted with agglutinative and analytic.

noun

(often synthetics)
  • a synthetic material or chemical, especially a textile fiber.

Derivatives

synthetical

adjective

synthetically

Pronunciation: /-ik(ə)lē/
adverb

Origin:

late 17th century: from French synthétique or modern Latin syntheticus, from Greek sunthetikos, based on suntithenai 'place together'

synthetic in other Oxford dictionaries

Definition of synthetic in the British & World English dictionary

Nearby words

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