Okay, so I finally got around to looking up the difference between inherent and intrinsic.

Inherent: existing in something as a permanent and inseparable element, quality, or attribute. And ooh! A grammar definintion: "Standing before a noun." That's my new Native American name: Stands Before Noun.

Intrinsic: belonging to a thing by its very nature. Anat: (of certain muscles, etc) belong to or lying within a given part

Pfft. Can't believe you even had to ask, the differences are so freaking obvious. Actually, I had to go look up some root words. The latin root for inherent is "inhaerero" (or something like that) which means to cling to or stick to. The latin root for intrinsic, which is "intrinsec" means within, or inside.

I actually was thinking for a moment that there was a difference between the two, and just started writing out this huge analogy using an egg. But then I just switched the words around and realized they both worked. With the root words, it does sort of seem like that inherent means that something that is inherent is something that can be pulled out of whatever it is inherent to and viewed but it still part of whatever it is inherent to, and intrinsic seems like it is actually woven into the meaning of whatever it is intrinsic in. That makes no sense. Okay, I'm not editing this anymore and just typing. Back to the egg: an egg intrinsically has a yolk because if you don't have a yolk you don't have an egg, you just have shells and a white. But is the yolk intrinsic to the egg? Nope, because if you take the yolk from the egg it's still a yolk. Is the yolk inherent to the egg? Have inherent eggness? I think it does, because you can't have a yolk without an egg, but if you remove the yolk from the egg it's still a yolk, but if you take the yolk from the egg its not an egg anymore. See what I'm getting at? Because I think I'm repeating myself but as I said, I'm not editing.

Worth noting: if you type "yolk" a whole bunch of times it starts to look really really weird.

Queen "Stands Before Noun" G