If a quality or ability is inborn, you did not learn it and nobody trained it into you — you already had it when you came into the world. People say this about talent, temperament, and instincts: an inborn gift for music, an inborn sense of fairness, an inborn fear of falling. It is a little more formal than saying someone was born with something, but it means the same thing. Though actually, scientists argue a lot about how much is truly there at birth and how much grows with the child's world; in everyday talk, inborn is still the word we reach for when we want to say this was not taught. Innate is a more academic neighbour. Congenital is the doctor's word, and it is mostly for conditions present at birth, not for talent. Inborn almost always sits in front of a noun: inborn ability, inborn talent.