synthetic

From French synthétique, from Ancient Greek συνθετικός (sunthetikós).

• enPR: sĭnthĕt'ĭk, IPA^(key): /sɪnˈθɛtɪk/

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synthetic (comparative more synthetic, superlative most synthetic)

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)
   • 2013 August 10, “A new prescription”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8848:

     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.

3. artificial, not genuine
4. (grammar) pertaining to the joining of bound morphemes in a word (compare analytic)
5. (linguistics) of a language, having a grammar principally dependent on the use of bound morphemes to indicate syntactic relationships (compare analytic)

synthetic (plural synthetics)

1. a synthetic compound
   • 2007 January 14, Elsa Brenner, “Art House to Get a Campus”, in New York Times‎:

     Only plastics and synthetics that cannot be recycled will end up in landfills, he said.