Genus
noun ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A category in the classification of organisms, ranking below family (Lat. familia) and above species.
"All magnolias belong to the genus Magnolia."
- 2 a general kind of something wordnet
- 3 A category in the classification of organisms, ranking below family (Lat. familia) and above species.; A taxon at this rank.
"In most cases, at subsequent mentions of the binomial name you can abbreviate the genus with no danger of confusing the reader."
- 4 (biology) taxonomic group containing one or more species wordnet
- 5 A group with common attributes.
"Recollection is one of a whole genus of effects which are more or less peculiar to the phenomena that we naturally call "mental.""
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- 6 A natural number representing any of several related measures of the complexity of a given manifold or graph.
- 7 Within a definition, a broader category of the defined concept.
- 8 A type of tuning or intonation, used within an Ancient Greek tetrachord.
Example
More examples"The biologist classifies the newly found species in its own genus, whereas other taxonomists want to put it into an established genus."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ǵenh₁- Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Indo-European *ǵénh₁os Latin genusbor. English genus Borrowed from Latin genus (“birth, origin, a race, sort, kind”) from the root gen- in Latin gignō (“to beget, produce”). Doublet of gender and genre, further related to kin.
Related phrases
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.