synthetic

Etymology

From French synthétique, from Ancient Greek συνθετικός (sunthetikós); Equivalent to synthesis + -ic (suffix formation of -tic).

adj

1. Of, or relating to synthesis.
2. (chemistry) Produced by synthesis instead of being isolated from a natural source (but may be identical to a product so obtained).
   As the world's drug habit shows, governments are failing in their quest to monitor every London window-box and Andean hillside for banned plants. But even that Sisyphean task looks easy next to the fight against synthetic drugs. No sooner has a drug been blacklisted than chemists adjust their recipe and start churning out a subtly different one. 2013-08-10, “A new prescription”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8848
3. (medicine) Produced by synthesis, thought to have the same effect as its natural counterpart, but chemically different from it.
4. Artificial, not genuine.
5. (grammar) Pertaining to the joining of bound morphemes in a word (compare analytic).
6. (linguistics) Of a language, having a grammar principally dependent on the use of bound morphemes to indicate syntactic relationships (compare analytic).

noun

1. A synthetic compound.
   Only plastics and synthetics that cannot be recycled will end up in landfills, he said. January 14, 2007, Elsa Brenner, “Art House to Get a Campus”, in New York Times