Innate

How to spell innate

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce innate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does innate mean?

1. adjectivePresent in a person or animal from birth; existing as a natural and inherent quality rather than something acquired or learned.

Innate in a sentence

• She has an innate talent for reading people and defusing tension.

• The researchers debated whether such caution is innate or shaped by upbringing.

Where does innate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Innate comes from the Latin innatus, which combined the prefix in-, meaning 'in' or 'into', with natus, the past participle of nasci, 'to be born'. Put together, the literal idea was 'born in' or 'inborn', describing a quality present from the very beginning of life rather than learned later. English adopted the word in the fifteenth century, keeping the sense of a trait fixed in someone by birth or by nature. The same Latin nasci is the hidden ancestor of a whole family of familiar words, including 'native', 'nature', 'nascent', and 'pregnant', all of which carry that idea of birth or origin. Remembering that the prefix in- meets a root beginning with n is the key to the spelling, since it explains why the word carries a double n.

How the word is built

• in- (in, into)
• nate (from Latin natus: born) = born within