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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

genius.

Someone possessing extraordinary intelligence or skill; especially somebody who has demonstrated this by a creative or original work in science, music, art, etc.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈd͡ʒiː.ni.əs/Received-Pronunciation/ˈd͡ʒin.jəs/General-American/ˈd͡ʒi.ni.əs/General-American
  1. Someone possessing extraordinary intelligence or skill; especially somebody who has demonstrated this by a creative or original work in science, music, art, etc.

    countable
    She's a genius; she won a Nobel Prize at fifteen!
  2. Extraordinary mental capacity.

    uncountable
  3. Inspiration, a mental leap, an extraordinary creative process.

    uncountable
    a work of genius
    to add a dash of cinnamon amid such umami was pure genius
  4. The tutelary deity or spirit of a place or person.

    Roman · also · countable · figuratively
    and the genius of the place: the growing enthusiasm for codified standards in the Army and Navy
Where this word comes from

From Latin genius (“inborn nature; a tutelary deity of a person or place; wit, brilliance”), from gignō (“to beget, produce”), Old Latin genō, from the Proto-Indo-European root *ǵenh₁-. Doublet of genio. See also genus and genie.

adj/ˈd͡ʒiː.ni.əs/Received-Pronunciation/ˈd͡ʒin.jəs/General-American/ˈd͡ʒi.ni.əs/General-American
  1. Ingenious, brilliant, very clever, or original.

    informal
    What a genius idea!
Where this word comes from

From Latin genius (“inborn nature; a tutelary deity of a person or place; wit, brilliance”), from gignō (“to beget, produce”), Old Latin genō, from the Proto-Indo-European root *ǵenh₁-. Doublet of genio. See also genus and genie.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.