ˌjenəˈrāshən noun
( -s )
Etymology: Middle English generacioun, from Middle French generation, from Latin generation-, generatio, from generatus + -ion-, -io -ion
1.
a. : a body of men, animals, or plants having a common parent or parents and constituting a single degree or step in the line of descent from an ancestor
five generations are shown in this family portrait
its surface enriched with the … carcasses of hundreds of generations of buffalo — B.K.Sandwell
studied a bacterial culture through 60 generations
b.
(1) : the whole number of human beings born and living contemporaneously
our generation has seen immense changes
his work affected the life and thought of later generations
(2) : a particular category of individuals born and living contemporaneously
inspired … a whole generation of theoreticians — Newsweek
long after that generation of scholars had passed away — G.B.Shaw
uses the vocabulary of his philosophic generation — John Dewey
the present generation of insects appears to have developed immunity to the spray
(3) : the average span of time variously computed and varying according to cultural and other conditions between the birth of parents and that of their children
among primitive peoples twenty years may make a generation
a generation … is roughly equal to the mean age of mothers at the birth of their daughters — Demographic Yearbook
fifty years constitutes roughly a working lifetime, a period covering two generations — Arthur Geddes
the cornerstone of the moral system … for generations — Joe Alvin
(4) : a group of individuals having contemporaneously a status (as that of students in a school) which each one holds only for a limited period
repeated by generation after generation of pupils — H.G.G.Herklots
(5) : a type or class of objects derived or developed from an earlier type
the Air Force's new generation of powerful supersonic fighters — Kenneth Koyen
2.
a. : the act or process of producing offspring : procreation
the organs of generation
b. : origination by some mathematical, chemical, or other process : production , formation
the generation of heat
the generation of sounds
specifically : the formation of a geometrical figure by the motion of some other figure
the generation of a line by a point
c. : the process of coming into being : genesis , development , rise
the spontaneous generation of these churches — Oscar Handlin
factors in the generation of income — G.V.Cox
3. obsolete : race , kind , breed , stock , family