Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of, relating to, or prompted by instinct.
  • adjective Arising from impulse or natural inclination. synonym: instinctive.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Of, relating to, or derived from instinct.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • And yet the following points favor the notion of instinctual foreknowledge of violations of conscience:

    CreationWiki - Recent changes [en] 2009

  • The 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the first thinkers to take seriously the idea of instinctual drives working below the level of conscious awareness, deriving from this subtle insight a vast wealth of philosophical positions on metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, psychology and many others.

    Berto: Philosophy Monkey 2008

  • Lead actor Andreas Lust (also seen in "Revanche," another chilly Austrian drama in which the moral calculus tallies up a psychological cliffhanger) portrays a kind of instinctual animal — or ascetic sociopath, take your pick — whose disciplined urges exhilarate, then implode.

    Spanning the Cinematic Globe From Midtown 2010

  • The rapid decisions, forced on him by disaster, that everyone mislabels "instinctual" have created a framework that in this case is solid, not a phantom.

    Close Up: The Mind of George W. Bush 2003

  • The rapid decisions, forced on him by disaster, that everyone mislabels "instinctual" have created a framework that in this case is solid, not a phantom.

    Close Up: The Mind of George W. Bush 2003

  • NOFZINGER: The brain is dealing with basic kind of instinctual feelings, fears, anxieties, motivation, sexual themes.

    CNN Transcript Oct 15, 2005 2005

  • NOFZINGER: The brain is dealing with basic, kind of instinctual feelings, fears, anxieties, motivations, sexual themes.

    CNN Transcript Aug 10, 2005 2005

  • NOFZINGER: The brain is dealing with basic kind of instinctual feelings, fears, anxieties, motivation, sexual themes.

    CNN Transcript Oct 16, 2005 2005

  • And, somehow, this scent awakened him out of his paralysis—and into a kind of instinctual response.

    The Welkening Gregory Spencer 2004

  • This is the estimative faculty, a kind of instinctual understanding shared by humans and brute animals.

    Mental Representation in Medieval Philosophy Lagerlund, Henrik 2004

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