natal

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin nātālis (“of or belonging to birth; presiding over birthdays”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} from nātus (“born”), the past participle of nāscor (“to be born”),^[3][4][5][7] with the suffix -ālis.^[2][8][9] Etymonline and the American Heritage Dictionary trace the verb to Proto-Indo-European *gene- (“to give birth, beget”).^[3][4] The OED takes the adjective partly from French natal as well, and the rare noun from Middle French natal, birthday.^[2] The word is a learned doublet of noel, the vernacular French form.^[3][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Presiding over births or birthdays: about 1385, in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, of the god Jove;^[2][5][10] Etymonline dates this sense, "of or pertaining to birthdays", to the late 14th century.^[3] Chaucer used the word only once.^[11]

Semantic evolution

Chaucer's sense of a god presiding over births did not last beyond the 15th century.^[2][12] From about 1440 the word meant native, of the place where a person was born or a plant first grew,^[2][13] a sense now chiefly literary.^[2] From 1447 it was used for anything relating to or dating from a person's birth;^[2][3] by 1500 it also named the hour or day of birth.^[2][14] Johnson (1755) defined it as "native; relating to nativity" and quoted Camden on princes named after their natal places.^[15] A noun natal, a birthday feast or celebration, borrowed from French, was used rarely from 1484 to 1634.^[2][14] Collins now calls the sense "native" rare.^[16]

Timeline

• c. 1385 – presiding over births, of a god (obsolete), in Chaucer.^[2][5]
• c. 1440 – native, of a place of birth or origin.^[2][13]
• 1447 – relating to or dating from a person's birth.^[2][14]
• 1484 – noun, a birthday feast (obsolete).^[2]
• before 1500 – of the hour or day of birth.^[2][14]
• 1597 – noun, in the plural, a birthday celebration (obsolete by 1634).^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Relating to, accompanying or present at birth: The midwife watched for natal complications.^[4][8][16]
2. Relating to the time or place of one's birth, or (chiefly literary) native: They returned to their natal village.^[4][2][8]
3. (obsolete) Of a god, presiding over births or birthdays.^[2][12][13]

Word family

• natality
• neonatal
• perinatal
• postnatal
• prenatal
• pronatalism

Related words

• nates
• nation
• native
• nascent
• nature
• noel

Usage notes

A separate adjective natal, of the buttocks, is formed from Latin natis, buttock (see nates), and is recorded from 1870.^[2][12][8] The South African province of Natal, now part of KwaZulu-Natal, was named Terra Natalis by Vasco da Gama, who sighted its coast on Christmas Day 1497;^[2][17] the name is stressed on the second syllable.^[2][16]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
10. ^ Skeat, W. W., ed. (1894), The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, vol. VI: Glossarial Index, Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
12. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
14. ^ a b c d Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
15. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
16. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
17. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press