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say it: NAY-chur
nature is a noun meaning "the essential qualities or characteristics by which something is recognized". It is pronounced /ˈneɪtʃɚ/ — NAY-chur. It carries 5 recorded senses.
the essential qualities or characteristics by which something is recognized
“it is the nature of fire to burn”
“the true nature of jealousy”
a causal agent creating and controlling things in the universe
“the laws of nature”
“nature has seen to it that men are stronger than women”
the natural physical world including plants and animals and landscapes etc.
“they tried to preserve nature as they found it”
the complex of emotional and intellectual attributes that determine a person's characteristic actions and reactions
“it is his nature to help others”
a particular type of thing
“problems of this type are very difficult to solve”
“he's interested in trains and things of that nature”
“matters of a personal nature”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for nature come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.