Generation

How to spell generation

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce generation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does generation mean?

1. nounAll the people born and living at roughly the same time, considered as a group.
2. nounThe act of producing or bringing something into existence, such as power, heat, or income.
3. nounA single stage in the line of descent from an ancestor to a descendant.

Generation in a sentence

• The younger generation tends to rely on smartphones for everything.

• The dam handles most of the region's electricity generation.

• The farm passed to the next generation when his father retired.

• His grandfather belonged to a generation that lived through the war.

• Lead generation is the main goal of the new marketing campaign.

• His generation grew up without the internet at home.

Where does generation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin generatio, a noun meaning 'a begetting' or 'a producing', which was built on the verb generare, 'to beget, give birth to, or bring into being'. That verb in turn grew from genus, a deep root meaning 'birth, race, or kind' that also underlies words such as 'gender', 'genus', and 'genuine'. English took it in through Old French during the 1300s, at first carrying the literal sense of the act of producing offspring. From there the meaning widened to cover a whole class of people born and living around the same time, the average span between a parent and a child, and eventually any act of bringing something into existence, as in the generation of heat or electricity. The single 'n' in the middle and the unstressed 'er' both trace straight back to genus and generare, which is a useful reminder that the word is built on 'gener', not 'gener-r' or 'genere'.

How the word is built

• gener- (from genus: birth, kind, race)
• -ation (noun of action)