natural number

American  

noun

1. a positive integer or zero.

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natural number British  

noun

1. any of the numbers 0,1,2,3,4,… that can be used to count the members of a set; the non-negative integers

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natural number Scientific  

1. A positive integer.

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Etymology

Origin of natural number

First recorded in 1755–65

Example Sentences

So why does mathematics, once we get past natural numbers and basic arithmetic, feel so alien to most of us?

From Scientific American

Coaches worried the format based on four-team meets would trim the postseason field from 36 to 32, a more natural number for a bracket.

From Washington Post

Our natural number sense adds and subtracts whole numbers, whole chucks, guppies and hyenas.

From New York Times

They hoped that by comparing these infinities, they might start to understand the possibly non-empty space between the size of the natural numbers and the size of the real numbers.

From Scientific American

In its additive capacity, however, 1 is unstoppable: if you keep adding 1 to itself, Dr. Cheng noted, you can generate all the natural numbers, out to infinity.

From New York Times