genus
nounUK /ˈdʒiːnəs/ · US /ˈd͡ʒiːnəs/
Etymology Borrowed from Latin genus (“birth, origin, a race, sort, kind”) from the root gen- in Latin gignō (“to beget, produce”). Doublet of gender and genre, further related to kin.
Biology, Natural sciences, Taxonomy A category in the classification of organisms, ranking below family (Lat. familia) and above species.
- All magnolias belong to the genus Magnolia.
- Other species of the genus Bos are often called cattle or wild cattle.
3 more examples
- There are only two genera and species of seadragons.
- Müller […] criticized the division of the "Jubuleae" into two families and he cited Jubula as an annectant genus.1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, Chicago, Ill.: Field Museum of Natural History, →ISBN, page 6:
- Other maloid genera with hard nutlets are Cotoneaster, Hesperomeles, Osteomeles, and Pyracantba, but each of these is quite different from Mespilus and Crataegus.2003, James B. Phipps, Robert J. O'Kennon, Ronald W. Lance, Hawthorns and Medlars, Portland, O.R.: Timber Press, →ISBN, page 57:
A group with common attributes.
- Recollection is one of a whole genus of effects which are more or less peculiar to the phenomena that we naturally call "mental."1945, Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, page 655:
Algebraic geometry, Geometry, Graph theory, Mathematics, Sciences, Topology A natural number representing any of several related measures of the complexity of a given manifold or graph.
Human sciences, Linguistics, Sciences, Semantics Within a definition, a broader category of the defined concept.
Entertainment, Lifestyle, Music A type of tuning or intonation, used within an Ancient Greek tetrachord.
- Derived terms
- bigenus, cloud genus, demigenus, Euler-Fokker genus, Euler genus, form genus, genarian, genotype, genus alternas, genus name, ichnogenus, intergenus, intragenus, multigenus, nothogenus, oogenus, plurigenus, pseudogenus, summum genus, type genus
- Related terms
- gender, general, generate, generation, generic, genocide, genre, infrageneric, differentia, domain, kingdom, phylum, division, class, order, family, supergenus, subgenus, section, series, species
- Hyponyms
- Euler genus, chromatic, diatonic, enharmonic