con·nat·u·ral

(kə-năch′ər-əl, kŏ-)

adj.

1. Innate; inborn.

2. Related or similar in nature; cognate.

[Medieval Latin connātūrālis : Latin com-, com- + Latin nātūrālis, by birth; see natural.]

con·nat′u·ral′i·ty (-ə-răl′ĭ-tē) n.

con·nat′u·ral·ly adv.

con·nat′u·ral·ness n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

References in periodicals archive

I will argue that the reason that beauty has this unique dual quality is because the beautiful object possesses an excess of intelligibility: as a result, while beauty transcends human abstractive powers, the orderly perfection of the object is nevertheless connaturally recognized.

Beauty as an excess of intelligibity

The metaphoricity of all our knowledge qualifies it as connaturally tentative, relativistic, multi-layered, and ever-changingly complex, sensuous and participative" (21).

Religion as Metaphor for Ethno-Ethnical Identity

Thus, Botwinick says, Oakeshott believes in a kind of "mysticism," which seems to mean that we know God exists, perhaps partly inferentially and partly connaturally, bur cannot really know much about Him or explain Him in words.

Botwinick, Aryeh. Michael Oakeshott's Skepticism

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