genre
noun · verb
Simple meaning
A kind of literary or artistic work.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
zhahnruhSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈʒɑnɹə
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 kind of literary or artistic work
A kind; a stylistic category or sort, especially of literature or other artworks.
verb
To assign or conform to a genre, to make genre-specific.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A kind of literary or artistic work
Used this way, genre is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in literature or storytelling 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
- Literature/storytelling
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use genre
- “My favorite movie genre is science fiction because it is so imaginative.”noun
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More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: kind of literary or artistic work
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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.