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preternatural

adj
/ˌpɹiː.təˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə)ɹ.əl/UK/ˌpɹi.tɚˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə)ɹ.əl/US

Etymology

From preter- + natural, after Latin prēternātūrālis/praeternātūrālis, from praeter nātūram, from praeter (“beyond”) + nātūra (“nature”); compare supernatural.

  1. borrowed from prēternātūrālis

Definitions

  1. Beyond or not conforming to what is natural or according to the regular course of things

    Beyond or not conforming to what is natural or according to the regular course of things; strange.

    • I have employed cold air, and very often spongings with cold water, in order to moderate the preternatural heat of the skin, and to check the increased velocity of the circulation.
    • Doubtless there has been some exaggeration in the picturesque and fanciful relations of the almost preternatural skill and cunning of the Indian […]
    • "Villette! Villette! wrote George Eliot. "It is a still more wonderful book than Jane Eyre. There is something almost preternatural in its power."

  2. Having an existence outside of the natural world.

    • Macbeth is like a record of a preternatural and tragical event.
    • Not Leonore, in that preternatural midnight excursion with her phantom lover, was more terrified than poor Maggie in this entirely natural ride on a short-paced donkey, [...]
    • Vansittart Smith, fixing his eyes upon the fellow's skin, was conscious of a sudden impression that there was something inhuman and preternatural about its appearance.

The neighborhood

Derived

preternaturalism, preternaturalist, preternaturality, preternaturally, preternaturalness, unpreternatural

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at preternatural. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01preternatural02conforming03conformity04resemblance05representation06appearance07apparition

A definitional loop anchored at preternatural. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

7 hops · closes at preternatural

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA