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An unpaired word is one that, according to the usual rules of the language, would appear to have a related word but does not. [1] Such words usually have a prefix or suffix that would imply that there is an antonym, with the prefix or suffix being absent or opposite.
Natural rights were traditionally viewed as exclusively negative rights, [6] whereas human rights also comprise positive rights. [7] Even on a natural rights conception of human rights, the two terms may not be synonymous. The concept of natural rights is not universally accepted, partly due to its religious associations and perceived incoherence.
An antonym is one of a pair of words with opposite meanings. Each word in the pair is the antithesis of the other. A word may have more than one antonym. There are three categories of antonyms identified by the nature of the relationship between the opposed meanings.
Devolution, de-evolution, or backward evolution (not to be confused with dysgenics) is the notion that species can revert to supposedly more primitive forms over time. The concept relates to the idea that evolution has a divine purpose and is thus progressive (orthogenesis), for example that feet might be better than hooves, or lungs than gills.
An appeal to nature is a rhetorical technique for presenting and proposing the argument that "a thing is good because it is 'natural', or bad because it is 'unnatural'." [1] In debate and discussion, an appeal-to-nature argument can be considered to be a bad argument, because the implicit primary premise "What is natural is good" has no factual meaning beyond rhetoric in some or most contexts.
Herbal anaphrodisiacs have been employed by various religious sects and orders throughout history. Barrister Sir Edward Marshall Hall theorised that murderer Hawley Harvey Crippen was using hyoscine on his wife as an anaphrodisiac but accidentally gave her an overdose and then panicked when she died.
A natural phenomenon is an observable event which is not man-made. Examples include: sunrise, weather, fog, thunder, tornadoes; biological processes, decomposition, germination; physical processes, wave propagation, erosion; tidal flow, and natural disasters such as electromagnetic pulses, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes and earthquakes. [1] [2]
Matters are complicated by the fact that the words nature and natural have more than one meaning. On the one hand there is the main dictionary meaning for nature: "The phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations."