inherently
Americanadverb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of inherently
Explanation
The adverb inherently means in a natural or innate manner. Some people enjoy your inherently cheerful nature, but it drives other people crazy because they find you annoyingly perky. Inherently is the adverbial form of the adjective inherent. They both come from the Latin word inhaerere, meaning "adhere to," with the root haerere meaning "to stick." Synonyms for inherently include intrinsically and essentially. If you do something inherently, it is so well ingrained in you that it's become part of who you are. If you are inherently late to every meeting, you should probably set your watch 15 minutes early.
Vocabulary lists containing inherently
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)
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The Fault in Our Stars
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The Poet X
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Patients with Type 2 diabetes who are either overweight or obese are an inherently difficult-to-treat patient population, the analyst says.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 22, 2026
It can "reveal a significant amount of information about an individual, including information that is inherently private", said DPC deputy commissioner Graham Doyle in a statement released on Monday.
From BBC ● Sep. 21, 2026
“Baseball is gnarly. It’s repetitive. It’s a sport that’s inherently, at times, very boring,” Maske said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 20, 2026
One longstanding ecological puzzle is that older mathematical models predicted large, complicated ecosystems should be inherently unstable.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 19, 2026
In wild fly populations, Dobzhansky noted, no genotype was inherently superior: whether the ABC or CBA strain survived depended on the environment, and on gene-environment interactions.
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
