| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| synthetic |
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| SYLLABICATION: | syn·thet·ic |
| PRONUNCIATION: |  s n-th t k |
| ADJECTIVE: | 1. Relating to, involving, or of the nature of synthesis. 2. Chemistry Produced by synthesis, especially not of natural origin. 3a. Not natural or genuine; artificial or contrived: “counterfeit rhetoric that flourishes when passions are synthetic” (George F. Will). b. Prepared or made artificially: synthetic leather. See synonyms at artificial. 4. Linguistics Relating to or being a language, such as Latin or Russian, that uses inflectional affixes to express syntactic relationships. 5. Logic & Philosophy Relating to or being a proposition that attributes to a subject a predicate not inherent in the subject and that does not result in a contradiction if negated. | | NOUN: | A synthetic chemical compound or material. | | ETYMOLOGY: | Greek sunthetikos, skilled in putting together, component, from sunthetos, combined, from suntithenai, to put together. See synthesis. | | OTHER FORMS: | syn·theti·cal·ly —ADVERB
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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