adj. 1. Relating to, involving, or of the nature of synthesis. 2. Chemistry Produced by synthesis, especially not of natural origin. 3. a. Prepared or made artificially: synthetic leather. b. Not natural or genuine; artificial or contrived: “counterfeit rhetoric that flourishes when passions are synthetic” (George F. Will). 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, not following necessarily from logically true statements. 6. Of or relating to a financial instrument or investment that consists entirely of derivatives, especially swap contracts. n. A synthetic chemical compound or material. [Greek sunthetikos, skilled in putting together, component, from sunthetos, combined, from suntithenai, to put together; see SYNTHESIS.] syn·theti·cal·ly adv. |
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