organic
adjective · noun
Simple meaning
Grown in an environment free from artificial agrichemicals, and possibly certified by a regulatory body.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
awrganikSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ɔɹˈɡænɪk
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
biology
Being or relating to or derived from or having properties characteristic of living organisms
agriculture
Of food or food products, grown in an environment free from artificial agrichemicals, and possibly certified by a regulatory body.
chemistry
Relating or belonging to the class of chemical compounds having a carbon basis
chemistry
Relating to the compounds of carbon, relating to natural products.
Developing in a gradual or natural fashion.
Harmonious; coherent; structured.
noun
An organic food.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B1 · Intermediate
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- Varies by meaning
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Being or relating to or derived from or having properties characteristic of living organisms
Used this way, organic is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a scientific use: it names something precisely within a field of study, so it appears in research and teaching more than in conversation.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Science
- Academic writing
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
A person who plays an organ.
A living thing that has (or can develop) the ability to act or function independently.
Formed into a structured or coherent whole, particularly on a large scale.
As an important constituent.
Create (as an entity).
Bring order and organization to.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Mental abnormality resulting from disturbance of the structure or function of the brain.
The chemistry of compounds containing carbon (originally defined as the chemistry of substances produced by living organisms but now extended to substances synthesized artificially).
Any compound of carbon and another element or a radical.
Disorder caused by a detectable physiological or structural change in an organ.
The sequence of events involved in the evolutionary development of a species or taxonomic group of organisms.
A fertilizer that is derived from animal or vegetable matter.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: organic food
Antonyms
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.