natural language

noun

plural natural languages

1

: a language (such as English, Spanish, or Samoan) that is the native speech of a people

In its pure meaning, a natural language is a spoken language, such as English or German.

—Robert A. Edmunds

In a natural language like English or French, asserting some proposition puts you at risk of being right or wrong.

—Jared Woodard

2

: the language of ordinary speaking and writing

—often used before another noun

This framework will enable developers to integrate A.I. models into their apps, facilitating capabilities such as image generation, text creation and natural language search.

—Victor Dey

… uses artificial intelligence to understand and respond to natural language queries.

—Isaiah Murtaugh

see also:

natural language processing

Examples of natural language in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

One of the most important additions is an AI engineer or machine learning specialist with experience in technologies such as machine learning, data processing, natural language processing (NLP), generative AI, speech recognition, intelligent automation and data analytics. — Alejandro Oses, Forbes.com, 26 June 2026

Robotic teaching assistant Designed for interactive, face-to-face engagement, the M-Series robot combines natural language processing, expressive facial movements and real-time conversational abilities to communicate with students in a human-like manner during classroom activities. — Jijo Malayil, Interesting Engineering, 25 June 2026

Students also have access to 14 AI courses on topics such as deep learning, natural language processing and data science. — Becca Savransky, Idaho Statesman, 25 June 2026

Using natural language prompts, users can ask the system to pull actuals, combine them with uploaded CSVs, detect mismatches, and build out a financial model—all while showing its work step by step. — Sheryl Estrada, Fortune, 10 June 2026

The chatbot, capable of conversing in natural language, captivated global audiences and has since developed advanced coding, voice interaction and image generation capabilities. — Los Angeles Times, 10 June 2026

Zendesk for Employee Service is a highly capable and scalable IT help desk platform with a slick set of ticket management tools and support for report generation via natural language prompts. — John Brandon, PC Magazine, 8 June 2026

The automated tools use natural language processing to analyze context, detect slurs and flag content. — Nathalie Japkowicz, The Conversation, 18 May 2026

The model uses a deep-learning natural language processing architecture to extract causal relationships between products, services, and their impacts from the scientific literature, and consolidates this information with economic data to produce quantitative estimates of corporate net impact. — Time Staff, Time, 12 May 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1570, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for natural language

• interlanguage
• metalanguage