NATURE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does nature mean? 

• NATURE (noun)
  The noun NATURE has 5 senses:

1. the essential qualities or characteristics by which something is recognized

2. a causal agent creating and controlling things in the universe

3. the natural physical world including plants and animals and landscapes etc.

4. the complex of emotional and intellectual attributes that determine a person's characteristic actions and reactions

5. a particular type of thing

  Familiarity information: NATURE used as a noun is common.

 Dictionary entry details 

• NATURE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The essential qualities or characteristics by which something is recognized

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Context example:

the true nature of jealousy

Hypernyms ("nature" is a kind of...):

quality (an essential and distinguishing attribute of something or someone)

Meronyms (parts of "nature"):

characteristic (a distinguishing quality)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A causal agent creating and controlling things in the universe

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Context example:

nature has seen to it that men are stronger than women

Hypernyms ("nature" is a kind of...):

causal agency; causal agent; cause (any entity that produces an effect or is responsible for events or results)

Sense 3

Meaning:

The natural physical world including plants and animals and landscapes etc.

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Context example:

they tried to preserve nature as they found it

Hypernyms ("nature" is a kind of...):

cosmos; creation; existence; macrocosm; universe; world (everything that exists anywhere)

Sense 4

Meaning:

The complex of emotional and intellectual attributes that determine a person's characteristic actions and reactions

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Context example:

it is his nature to help others

Hypernyms ("nature" is a kind of...):

trait (a distinguishing feature of your personal nature)

Attribute:

good-natured (having an easygoing and cheerful disposition)

ill-natured (having an irritable and unpleasant disposition)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "nature"):

animal nature; animality (the physical (or animal) side of a person as opposed to the spirit or intellect)

disposition; temperament (your usual mood)

complexion ((obsolete) a combination of elements (of dryness and warmth or of the four humors) that was once believed to determine a person's health and temperament)

sociality (the tendency to associate with others and to form social groups)

Holonyms ("nature" is a part of...):

personality (the complex of all the attributes--behavioral, temperamental, emotional and mental--that characterize a unique individual)

Sense 5

Meaning:

A particular type of thing

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Context example:

matters of a personal nature

Hypernyms ("nature" is a kind of...):

type (a subdivision of a particular kind of thing)

 Context examples 

You have such a gentle nature, and you are always right.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

This was a god indeed, a love-god, a warm and radiant god, in whose light White Fang's nature expanded as a flower expands under the sun.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

I greatly fear that she is of too super-sensitive a nature to go through the world without trouble.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

These, we presume, indicated the nature of the papers which had been destroyed by Colonel Openshaw.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

For the rest, the man’s life moved in a narrow and conventional circle, for his habits were quiet and his nature unemotional.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Here all is softness and gentleness. Neither the human nor nature is savage. He will never know a whip-lash again. And as for the weather—why, it never snows here.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

Nature is a spendthrift. Look at the fish and their millions of eggs.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

It would not be the nature of any woman who truly loved.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)