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

First, natural language reduces the learning curve, making the field more accessible to people with strong judgment but less tool-specific training. — Ipsita Mohanty, Forbes.com, 30 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

Word History

First Known Use

1570, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for natural language

• interlanguage
• metalanguage