Genre
nounA recognised category or style of art, literature, film, or music defined by shared form or content.
How to spell genre
5 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce genre
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does genre mean?
- nounA recognised category or style of art, literature, film, or music defined by shared form or content.
Genre in a sentence
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Horror is her favourite genre of film.
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The bookshop arranges its shelves by genre rather than by author.
Where does genre come from?
Language of origin: French
Genre came into English in the late 1700s straight from French, where it simply meant 'kind' or 'type'. The French word descends from the Latin genus (stem gener-), which meant 'birth, race, stock, or class', and which in turn traces back to an ancient root meaning 'to give birth' or 'to beget'. Because it was adopted wholesale from French, the word kept its French shape and its French sound, with that soft 'zh' opening and the unusual -re ending that English speakers rarely have to write. The same Latin genus has seeded a large family of English words, including gender, generate, generic, general, and the scientific term genus itself, all carrying the idea of a kind or category. The spelling trap is purely that French inheritance: the silent leaning of the opening consonant and the final -re order (not -er) catch out writers who otherwise spell phonetically.
How the word is built
- genre (a single root borrowed whole from French, going back to Latin genus: birth, kind, class)
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