innate

UK/ɪˈneɪt/US/ɪˈneɪt/

adjectiveB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,307 of 15,258leans written

Innate means present from birth rather than learned. An innate ability, innate curiosity, innate immunity.

It is the technical opposite of learned, and the argument about which human traits are innate is the nature and nurture debate in one word. In immunology, innate immunity is the defence you are born with, against adaptive immunity, which is built from experience. Note innately; and that the Latin means born in, from nasci, to be born.

Definitions of innate

1adjectiveinnatePresent from birth rather than learned.B2+
“She has an innate gift for music and could play by ear before she could read.”
synonyms: inborn, inherent

innate is a quality of being inborn.

Where it comes from

Latin innatus is in plus natus, born, from nasci. Native, nature and pregnant come from the same birth.

Proto-Indo-European
*ǵenh₁-
Latin
innātus — inborn, innate
Middle English
innat — innate, inborn
English, today
innate

Built from

innāscor · Latin — to be born in, grow up in
in- · Latin — in, at on
nāscor · Latin — to be born

The adjective is 1420s, the verb in 1602; from Middle English innat (“innate, inborn”), borrowed from Latin innātus (“inborn, innate”) (see -ate), perfect active participle of innāscor (“to be born in, grow up in”), from in- (“in, at on”) + nāscor (“to be born”); see natal, native. The verb is derived from the adjective, see -ate.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

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innate in the wild

Universal grammar (UG), in modern linguistics, is the theory of the innate biological component of the language faculty, usually credited to Noam Chomsky.
Universal grammar
In adaptive immunity, pathogen-specific receptors are "acquired" during the lifetime of the organism (whereas in innate immunity pathogen-specific receptors are already encoded in the genome).
Adaptive immune system
However, over time, people tend to disregard and overlook their innate nature, causing it to become obscured and deeply buried within them.
Fitra
Many of their roles are similar to T cells, therefore they have been suggested to be the innate counterparts of T cells.
Innate lymphoid cell
A small proportion of humans show partial or apparently complete innate resistance to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Innate resistance to HIV

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the nāscor family

pregnant natural

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