Geniuses

How to spell geniuses

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce geniuses

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does geniuses mean?

1. nounMore than one person of exceptional natural intelligence or talent.

Geniuses in a sentence

• The company recruited several mathematical geniuses for its research team.

• History remembers the great geniuses who reshaped science and art.

Where does geniuses come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the English plural of 'genius', which comes directly from the Latin genius, the name for the guardian spirit that the Romans believed was assigned to a person at birth to shape their character and fortune. The Latin word grew out of the verb gignere, 'to beget' or 'to bring into being', so a genius was literally the spirit present at one's begetting. Over centuries the sense drifted from a protective spirit toward a person's innate disposition or talent, and by the seventeenth century English used it for an exceptional natural ability, then for the brilliant person who possesses it. When English took the noun, it kept the Latin -us ending but formed the plural the ordinary English way, adding -es to give 'geniuses' rather than the Latin plural 'genii', which survives only in talk of guardian spirits and the genie of folklore. The trap in spelling lies in the unstressed middle, since the 'ius' followed by 'es' tempts writers to drop a letter or rearrange the vowels.

How the word is built

• geni- (from Latin genius: guardian spirit, inborn nature)
• -us (Latin noun ending)
• -es (English plural suffix)