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

This quarter Copilot Workflow Execution will allow storage administrators to use natural language to plan, validate and enabling secure end-to-end operations. —Thomas Coughlin, Forbes.com, 19 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 tech giant's next-generation Proteus is an autonomous mobile robot, which is designed to understand natural language commands from workers and transport items in warehouses. —Sawdah Bhaimiya, CNBC, 5 June 2026

Netflix now integrates generative AI and natural language processing to help discern what a viewer is in the mood to watch, Stone said. —Bloomberg, Mercury News, 4 June 2026

During pilot deployments at Vinpearl Safari Phu Quoc, the robot operated in challenging outdoor conditions, utilizing multilingual speech capabilities, natural language interaction, and real-time environmental awareness to engage with visitors and respond to questions. —Jijo Malayil, Interesting Engineering, 2 June 2026

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

Word History

First Known Use

1570, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for natural language

• interlanguage
• metalanguage