au naturel
Of the action of a person: in a manner without makeup and with one's natural hair colourIn a natural state; without any artificial change; naturally; also, in a way to appear natural.: Of the action of a person: in a manner without makeup and with one's natural hair colour.
Meaning
4 sensesIn a natural state; without any artificial change; naturally; also, in a way to appear natural.
(not comparable)Of the action of a person: in a manner without makeup and with one's natural hair colour.
(not comparable)Of the action of a person (especially a woman): in a manner with untrimmed pubic hair.
(not comparable)Of the preparation or serving of food: in a raw or very simply cooked manner.
Our chef insists on preparing this cut au naturel.
(humorous, not comparable, sometimes)Of the action of a person: in a naked manner; without clothes; in the nude, nakedly.
Bella loved posing au naturel for the artist.
Origin
Unadapted borrowing from French au naturel (“in the natural state; cooked plainly”), fromUnadapted borrowing from French au naturel (“in the natural state; cooked plainly”), from au (“at the; in the; to the”) + naturel (“natural”) (ultimately borrowed from Latin nātūrālis (“of or relating to nature”), from nātūra (“natural world, nature”) + -ālis (suffix forming adjectives of relationship)). Nātūra is derived from nāscor (“to be born; to grow, spring forth”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ǵenh₁- (“to beget; to give birth; to produce”)) + -tūra (suffix forming action nouns denoting activities or their results).
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Word family
2 related wordsSee also
neighbours in the dictionaryDictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.