English Explanatory Dictionary

generation

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. The act of creating something or bringing something into being; production, creation.
  2. The act of creating a living creature or organism; procreation.
  3. Race, family; breed.
  4. A single step or stage in the succession of natural descent; a rank or degree in genealogy, the members of a family from the same parents, considered as a single unit.
  5. Descendants, progeny; offspring.
  6. The average amount of time needed for children to grow up and have children of their own, generally considered to be a period of around thirty years, used as a measure of time.
  7. A set stage in the development of computing or of a specific technology.
  8. The formation or production of any geometrical magnitude, as a line, a surface, a solid, by the motion, in accordance with a mathematical law, of a point or a magnitude, by the motion of a point, of a surface by a line, a sphere by a semicircle, etc.
  9. A group of people born in a specific range of years and whose members can relate culturally to one another.
  10. A version of a form of pop culture which differs from later or earlier versions.
  11. A copy of a recording made from an earlier copy.
  12. A single iteration of a cellular automaton rule on a pattern.

Pronunciation

/ˌd͡ʒɛnəˈɹeɪʃən/ en-us-generation.ogg

Word forms

generation generations

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English generacioun, from Anglo-Norman generacioun, Middle French generacion, and their source, Latin generātiō, from generāre (“to beget, generate”). By surface analysis, generate + -ion.

Related words

generate

Derived words

aerogeneration autogeneration beat generation biogeneration cogeneration congeneration cybergeneration electrogeneration first-generation generation to generation generational generation effect generationer generation gap generationism generation loss generationology generation ship generation time generationwide greatest generation hydrogeneration intergeneration intrageneration multigeneration neogeneration new-generation next-generation next generation networking once-in-a-generation organs of generation overgeneration Peter Pan generation photogeneration pregeneration regeneration second-generation second-harmonic generation snowflake generation strawberry generation subgeneration trigeneration undergeneration Windrush generation World War II generation X generation
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