Word.ws English Dictionary

nature vs. nurture

nature vs. nurture is the alternative form of nature versus nurture.

Meaning of nature versus nurture

Phrase

nature versus nurture

  1. The longstanding academic inquiry into the relative contributions of innate biological factors (nature) and environmental influences or upbringing (nurture) to the development of human traits, behaviors, personality and psychology.
    • Since Francis Galton coined the phrase “nature versus nurture” 150 years ago, the debate about what makes us who we are has dominated the human sciences. Do genes determine our destiny, as the hereditarians would say? Or do we enter the world as blank slates, formed only by what we encounter in our...2025 March 13, Dalton Conley, “A New Scientific Field Is Recasting Who We Are and How We Got That Way”, in New York Times

Questions about nature vs. nurture

What is nature vs. nurture the alternative form of?
Nature vs. nurture is the alternative form of nature versus nurture.

Words near nature vs. nurture in the dictionary

  1. nature tables
  2. nature trail
  3. nature trails
  4. nature versus nurture
  5. nature vs nurture
  6. nature vs. nurture
  7. nature's candy
  8. nature's garb
  9. nature's scythe
  10. nature's scythes
  11. nature's toothbrush

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nature vs. nurture (page history and authors); nature versus nurture (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “nature vs. nurture.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nature_vs._nurture. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.