genealogy
noun
Simple meaning
The descent of a person, family, or group from an ancestor or ancestors.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
jeeneeahluhjeeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
dʒiniˈɑlədʒi
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
countable
The descent of a person, family, or group from an ancestor or ancestors; lineage or pedigree.
countable
A record or table of such descent; a family tree.
uncountable
The study, and formal recording of such descents.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The descent of a person, family, or group from an ancestor or ancestors; lineage or pedigree.
Used this way, genealogy is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in family or home contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Family/home
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use genealogy
- “My grandmother is researching our family's genealogy to find our roots.”
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More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: descent of a person or family
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.