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gen

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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See also: Appendix:Variations of "gen"
Languages (31)
English
Catalan • Czech • Danish • Dutch • German • Haitian Creole • Icelandic • Indonesian • Japanese • Malay • Mandarin • Middle English • Mwotlap • Norwegian Bokmål • Norwegian Nynorsk • Old English • Old High German • Old Irish • Old Occitan • Polish • Romanian • Spanish • Swedish • Tok Pisin • Turkish • Vietnamese • Vurës • Welsh • Zhuang • Zou
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English

Pronunciation

Etymology 1

Clipping of general.

Noun

gen (uncountable)

  1. (chiefly UK, Ireland, Commonwealth, informal) Information.
    • 2015, Nicholas Whittaker, Platform Souls: The Trainspotter as 20th-Century Hero:
      Nose around any modest-sized station and the odds are you'll find that the chargeman's office doubles as a bashers' club, a place where shivering spotters can get warm and catch up on the gen.
  2. (birdwatching) Information about the location of a bird.
    • 2005, Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 172:
      I had some recent gen that they had been seen quite recently at Kunoth Well, a little dot on the map on the edge of the Tanami Desert.
  3. (fandom slang) Fan fiction that does not specifically focus on romance or sex.
Synonyms

See also

Etymology 2

Noun

gen (plural gens)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of Gen (“member of the Gen Movement”).

Etymology 3

Shortened from generate and generator.

Verb

gen (third-person singular simple present gens, present participle genning, simple past and past participle genned)

  1. To generate using an automated process, especially a computer program.
    • 1991, Bruce H. Hunter, Karen Bradford Hunter, UNIX Systems: Advanced Administration and Management Handbook:
      Defining the devices so that they will be genned during the sysgen and installation is the other half.
    • 1993, Debra R. Niedermiller-Chaffins, Drew Heywood, Inside Novell NetWare, →ISBN, page 100:
      The older, genned files are difficult to keep up-to-date and are unsupported for some newer NICs.
    • 2010, Donald K. Burleson, Oracle Tuning: The Definitive Reference, →ISBN, page 1109:
      As the capacities of the large servers are exceeded, a new server is genned into the RAC cluster.
    • 2012, Robert Charles Wilson, Bios, →ISBN:
      The Turing factories on Isis's small moon had fallen short of productivity goals, though another two factory units had been genned.

Noun

gen (plural gens)

  1. (slang) A generator (device that converts mechanical to electrical energy).
    Synonym: genny

Etymology 4

Shortened from genetic engineering

Verb

gen (third-person singular simple present gens, present participle genning, simple past and past participle genned)

  1. (science fiction) To genetically engineer.
    • 2008, Bart Dahmer, Primal Screams, →ISBN, page 36:
      Samples could be taken from the original, and plans could be made, but genning could not be initiated until death had occurred.
    • 2011, Karen Sandler, Tankborn, →ISBN, page 28:
      Her nurturer ears, genned to be hyper-sensitive, had to be hurting from the noise.

Etymology 5

Etymology unknown. Possibilities include:

Noun

gen (plural gens)

  1. (obsolete, UK, slang) A shilling.
    • 1851, Henry Mayhew, “Gambling of Costermongers”, in London Labour and the London Poor‎, volume 1, page 17:
      The betting also began to shift. "Sixpence Ned wins!" cried three or four; "Sixpence he loses!" answered another; "Done!" and up went the halfpence. "Half-a-crown Joe loses!"—"Here you are," answered Joe, but he lost again. "I'll try you a 'gen'" (shilling) said a coster; "And a 'rouf yenap'" (fourpence), added the other. "Say a 'exes'" (sixpence).—"Done!" and the betting continued, till the ground was spotted with silver and halfpence.
    • 1978, Rose Ayers, The Street Sparrows:
      "Give me two gen, then, and take the whole bloody tol. I've walked me teef orf afore rouf this mornin', and wot 'ave I got? Two bloody yenneps! I ask yer."

Etymology 6

Clipping of generation.

Noun

gen (plural gens)

  1. (informal) A generation (group of people born in a specific range of years).
    • 2022 June 28, “Wimbledon tennis: Fans react to Kristina Mladenovic's eye-catching outfit”, in The New Zealand Herald‎:
      "Mladenovic playing in what the young gen is calling a crop top, but what my gen is calling a bra," Bouchard tweeted. "Sign of the times that Wimbledon has no issue with that. Still can remember the year some had troubles because of 'too short' skirts lol."
    • 2022 July 4, Ben Schott, “Is There Anything That Gen Z Won’t Drink?”, in The Washington Post‎:
      It’s anyone’s guess whether such attitudes will persist into adulthood, but if Gen Z (and the gens to come) do prove more alco-skeptic than their forbears then the above twelve steps are deftly primed to cash in.
  2. (informal, in combination) A specific version of something in a chronological sequence.
    • 2004, Sally Bishai, “Courtship, Marriage and the Ubiquitous ‘Dating Thing’”, in Mid-East Meets West: On Being and Becoming a Modern Arab American, Lincoln, Neb.: iUniverse, →ISBN, page 57:
      For my fellow first-gens, get ready to hide a smirk, because your life story is likely hidden somewhere in this chapter. For the uninitiated—that is, the person who's never had a thing to do with the Arab way of doing things (namely dating)—I advise you to buckle up.
    • 2016, Dwight Lang, “Witnessing Social Class in the Academy”, in Allison L. Hurst, Sandi Kawecka Nenga, editors, Working in Class: Recognizing How Social Class Shapes Our Academic Work, Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, →ISBN, part 2 (Teaching), page 102:
      […] I witness firsthand the difficult "downstream" outcomes (Grusky 2014) of social class stratification in a university setting where approximately 3,400 undergraduates (13% of the undergraduate population) are first in their families to attend and/or graduate from college (first-gens). Most of these students are low income and nearly 1,200 first-gens have grown up in poverty.
    • 2017, Temple Fennell, “SCIE: Sustainable Cycle of Investing Engagement”, in Kirby Rosplock, The Complete Direct Investing Handbook: A Guide for Family Offices, Qualified Purchasers, and Accredited Investors (Bloomberg Financial Series), Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 242:
      The Family Values and Framing Strategy steps address soft issues as what is the purpose of the new investment strategy, is there a desire to engage and train the next generation (Next Gens), and is there building buy-in and engagement across the family members important to strengthen family unity.
Derived terms

Anagrams

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Catalan

Catalan Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia ca

Etymology

Borrowed from German Gen.

Pronunciation

Noun

gen m (plural gens)

  1. gene

Further reading

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Czech

Czech Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia cs

Etymology

Borrowed from German Gen.

Pronunciation

Noun

gen m inan

  1. gene

Declension

Declension of gen (hard masculine inanimate)
More information singular, plural ...

Further reading

Danish

Etymology 1

From German Gen, from Ancient Greek γενεά (geneá, “generation, descent”), from the aorist infinitive of γίγνομαι (gígnomai, “I come into being”). Coined by the Danish biologist Wilhelm Ludvig Johannsen in a German-language publication.

Noun

gen n (singular definite genet, plural indefinite gener)

  1. (genetics) gene
Declension
More information neuter gender, singular ...

Etymology 2

Verb

gen

  1. imperative of genne

References

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Dutch

Etymology

From German Gen, from Ancient Greek γενεά (geneá, “generation, descent”), from the aorist infinitive of γίγνομαι (gígnomai, “I come into being”). Coined by the Danish biologist Wilhelm Ludvig Johannsen in a German-language publication.

Pronunciation

Noun

gen n (plural genen)

  1. gene

Descendants

  • → Indonesian: gen

Anagrams

German

Etymology

From Middle High German gēn, gein, from gegen with elision of intervocalic -g- (compare Getreide, Maid). Doublet of gegen (“against”). Cognate with Yiddish קיין (keyn).

Pronunciation

Preposition

gen [with accusative]

  1. (literary, somewhat dated) in the direction; to; towards (a place or time)
    gen Norden ― to the north, northwards
    gen Abend ― towards the evening, in the late afternoon

Synonyms

Further reading

  • “gen” in Duden online
  • “gen” in Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache
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Haitian Creole

Pronunciation

Verb

gen

  1. contraction of genyen

Icelandic

Etymology

Borrowed from German Gen.

Noun

gen n (genitive singular gens, nominative plural gen)

  1. gene

Declension

More information singular, plural ...

Indonesian

Etymology

Borrowed from Dutch gen.

Pronunciation

Noun

gen (plural gen-gen)

  1. (genetics) gene (a theoretical unit of heredity of living organisms)

Derived terms

  • gen pul (“gene pool”)

Further reading

Japanese

Romanization

gen

  1. Rōmaji transcription of げん
  2. Rōmaji transcription of ゲン

Malay

Malay Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia ms

Etymology

Borrowed from Dutch gen (“gene”), from German Gen (which was coined by Danish biologist Wilhelm Ludvig Johannsen in a German-language publication), from Ancient Greek γενεά (geneá, “generation, descent”), from the aorist infinitive of γίγνομαι (gígnomai, “I come into being”).

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈɡen/
  • Rhymes: -en

Noun

gen (plural gen-gen)

  1. gene
    1. (genetics) a theoretical unit of heredity of living organisms; a gene may take several values and in principle predetermines a precise trait of an organism's form (phenotype), such as hair colour.
    2. (molecular biology) locus: a segment of DNA or RNA from a cell's or an organism's genome, that may take several forms and thus parameterizes a phenomenon, in general the structure of a protein.

Derived terms

  • aliran gen
  • bank gen
  • frekuensi gen
  • gen resesif
  • keekspresian gen
  • penggantian gen
  • takung gen
  • tindakan gen

Further reading

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Mandarin

Romanization

gen

  1. nonstandard spelling of gēn
  2. nonstandard spelling of gén
  3. nonstandard spelling of gěn
  4. nonstandard spelling of gèn

Usage notes

  • Transcriptions of Mandarin into the Latin script often do not distinguish between the critical tonal differences employed in the Mandarin language, using words such as this one without indication of tone.

Middle English

Preposition

gen

  1. alternative form of gain (“against”)

Mwotlap

Etymology

From Proto-Torres-Banks *ɣani, from Proto-Oceanic *kani, from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *kaən, from Proto-Austronesian *kaən. Cognate with Vurës gen.

Pronunciation

Verb

gen

  1. to eat (meat, vegetables)
  2. to suffer (s.th. unpleasant)
  3. to acquire (an honorific rank)
  4. (transitive) (fire) to burn s.th.
  5. (intransitive) (fire) to burn

Derived terms

References

François, Alexandre. 2025. Online Mwotlap–English–French cultural dictionary. Electronic files. Paris: CNRS. (Pdf version) – entry gen.

Norwegian Bokmål

Norwegian Nynorsk

Old English

Old High German

Old Irish

Old Occitan

Polish

Romanian

Spanish

Swedish

Tok Pisin

Turkish

Vietnamese

Vurës

Welsh

Zhuang

Zou

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