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LATIN · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

genus.

birth/descent/origin; race/family/house/stock/ancestry; offspring/descent; noble birth; kind/sort/variety; class/rank; mode/method/style/fashion/way;

5 characters2 syllables approx.Latina language

Meaning & usage

noun[ˈɡɛ.nʊs]Classical-Latin[ˈd͡ʒɛː.nus]
  1. birth, origin, lineage, descent

    declension-3 · neuter
  2. kind, type, class

    declension-3 · neuter
  3. species (general classification, as of living things), taxon (of animal or plant), race (of people or animals)

    declension-3 · neuter
  4. set, group, category (with common attributes)

    declension-3 · neuter
  5. gender

    declension-3 · neuter
  6. subtype of word

    declension-3 · neuter
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ǵenh₁- Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Indo-European *ǵénh₁os Proto-Italic *genos Latin genus From Proto-Italic *genos, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵénh₁os n (“race”), from the root *ǵenh₁- (“to produce, beget”); compare also gēns, gignō and -gnus, from the same root. The genitive gener-is (< PIE *ǵénh₁es-os) displays the sound shift -r- < intervocalic *-s-, through which the Old Latin form *genes-is can be reconstructed. Cognates include Ancient Greek γένος (génos, “race, stock, kin, kind”), Sanskrit जनस् (jánas, “race, class of beings”), Proto-Celtic *genos (“birth; family”), and English kin. Doublet of genea.

noun[ˈɡɛ.nuːs]Classical-Latin[ˈd͡ʒɛː.nus]
  1. genitive singular of genū̆

    form-of · genitive · singular
Where this word comes from

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

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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.