Word.ws English Dictionary

præternatural

præternatural is the obsolete form of preternatural.

Meaning of preternatural

Adjective

preternatural (comparative more preternatural, superlative most preternatural)

  1. Beyond or not conforming to what is natural or according to the regular course of things; strange.
    • I have employed cold air, and very often spongings with cold water, in order to moderate the preternatural heat of the skin, and to check the increased velocity of the circulation.1815, William Shearman, New Medical and Physical Journal
  2. (dated) Having an existence outside the natural world.
    • Macbeth is like a record of a preternatural and tragical event.1817, William Hazlitt, “Macbeth”, in Characters of Shakespeare's Plays

Forms of præternatural

comparativemore præternatural
superlativemost præternatural

Questions about præternatural

What is præternatural the obsolete form of?
Præternatural is the obsolete form of preternatural.

Words near præternatural in the dictionary

  1. prætensions
  2. prætentious
  3. præter-
  4. præterite
  5. præterition
  6. præternatural
  7. prætexta
  8. prætor
  9. prætores
  10. prætoria
  11. prætorian

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: præternatural (page history and authors); preternatural (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: “præternatural.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pr%C3%A6ternatural. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.