generation
noun
Simple meaning
A group of people born in a specific range of years and whose members can relate culturally to one another.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
jehnerayshuhnSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
dʒɛnɚˈeɪʃən
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
A group of people born in a specific range of years and whose members can relate culturally to one another.
The normal time between successive generations
“They had to wait a generation for that prejudice to fade.”
The act of creating something or bringing something into being; production, creation.
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.
The act of creating a living creature or organism; procreation.
Group of genetically related organisms constituting a single step in the line of descent
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner (estimated)
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- Varies by meaning
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A group of people born in a specific range of years and whose members can relate culturally to one another.
Used this way, generation is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use generation
- “They had to wait a generation for that prejudice to fade.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
Wine that does not meet the minimum qualifications and standards for use of a designation by appellation of origin (where the grapes are grown) or by varietal content.
Applying to all or most members of a category or group.
Usually.
Without a trademark or brand name.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A difference between the views of young people and their parents.
The generation following the baby boom (especially Americans and Canadians born in the 1960s and 1970s).
A hypothetical organic phenomenon by which living organisms are created from nonliving matter.
Power derived from the wind (as by windmills).
The alternation of two or more different forms in the life cycle of a plant or animal.
The larger than expected generation in United States born shortly after World War II.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
Of or relating to a generation.
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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.