General

How to spell general

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce general

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does general mean?

1. adjectiveAffecting or concerning all or most people or things; not limited to a particular case.
2. nounA high-ranking commander in an army, responsible for large numbers of troops.

General in a sentence

• adjective

  The report gives a general overview of the company finances.

• noun

  The general ordered the troops to hold their position.

• adjective

  There was general agreement among the staff about the new policy.

• noun

  A retired general now lectures on military strategy.

Where does general come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin generalis, meaning 'relating to all, belonging to a whole class or kind'. That adjective was built on genus (stem gener-), which literally meant 'kind, sort, race, or class', the same root that gives us 'genus', 'gender', and 'generate'. The idea was that something general applied to an entire category rather than to one specific member of it. English took the word through Old French during the 1200s, keeping both the broad adjective sense and a noun use. The military rank arose as a shortening of phrases like 'captain general', meaning the officer in overall command of all the forces, so the soldier's title literally records the sense of authority over the whole army. Remembering the gener- root, the same one as in 'generic', helps fix the middle spelling rather than the tempting 'gen-RAL' you actually say.

How the word is built

• gener- (from Latin genus: kind, race, class)
• -al (adjective/noun suffix)