# synthetic

Pronunciation: say "sin-THET-ik" /sɪnˈθɛtɪk/

## Adjective

1. Made artificially by chemical synthesis rather than obtained from a natural source, whether identical to the natural substance or designed to imitate or act like it.
   - Simple: Made by people using chemicals, not taken from nature, often to copy or replace a natural substance.
   - _Synthetic vitamin C is chemically identical to the vitamin in oranges._
   - _Customs officers seized a shipment of synthetic drugs hidden in a container of machine parts._
2. Artificial and not genuine, put on or manufactured rather than real.
   - Simple: Not real or true, but made to look real.
   - _The host greeted every guest with the same synthetic smile._
   - _The band's synthetic charm wore thin after the first few songs._
3. Relating to synthesis, the combining of separate elements into a whole.
   - Simple: About putting separate parts together to make one whole thing.
   - _She runs a synthetic chemistry lab that designs new routes to known drugs._
   - _The review takes a synthetic approach, drawing the findings of a dozen studies into one picture._
5. In linguistics, of a language or grammatical form: expressing grammatical relationships mainly by joining bound morphemes, such as inflectional endings, within a word rather than by separate words; contrasted with analytic.
   - Simple: In grammar, showing meaning like tense or case with word endings instead of separate words, as Latin does.
   - _Latin is a highly synthetic language that marks the role of each noun with its ending._
   - _Over the centuries English became less synthetic and came to rely more on word order._

## Noun

4. A compound or material made by chemical synthesis rather than taken from nature.
   - Simple: A material made from chemicals in a factory, not taken from nature.
   - _The coat is lined with a light synthetic that dries quickly._
   - _Many runners prefer synthetics to cotton because they pull sweat away from the skin._

## Origin

The word goes back to Ancient Greek sunthetikós by way of French synthétique, and it can be broken down as synthesis plus -ic.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/synthetic (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).