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Genre, as you might guess from the way it sounds, comes straight from French, a language based on Latin. It's closely related to genus, a word you may have encountered in biology class. Both words contain the gen- root because they indicate that everything in a particular category (a genre or a genus) belongs to the same "family" and thus has the same origins. So the main genres of classical music would include symphonies, sonatas, and opera, and the major genres of literature would include novels, short stories, poetry, and drama. But within the category of novels, we could also say that detective novels, sci-fi novels, romance novels, and young-adult novels are separate genres.
Synonyms
Examples of genre in a Sentence
Joyce Carol Oates, New York Review of Books, 14 Aug. 2003
One of the first marketers outside of hip-hop to recognize the power of the genre … . he first sent models sashaying down the runway in 1991 in hip-hop chic, with sneakers and chunky gold chains …
—Johnnie L. Roberts, Newsweek, 2 Sept. 2002
Even the local Catholic archdiocesan weekly, hardly an exciting genre, offers a more provocative sampling of opinion on its editorial page.
—Walker Percy, "New Orleans Mon Amour," 1968,
in Signposts in a Strange Land, 1991
This book is a classic of the mystery genre.
the novel's hero is of a different genre than the traditional kind
Joe Reedy, Chicago Tribune, 14 Jan. 2025
Choosing to create salsa and plena tracks alone is part of an enduring tradition of protest in the genre, according to experts.
—Solcyré Burga, TIME, 14 Jan. 2025
The director Michael Gracey adheres to the biopic genre’s basic contours.
—David Sims, The Atlantic, 14 Jan. 2025
My main game, Destiny, has survived 10 years, and is the main reason that everyone leapt toward this genre in the first place.
—Paul Tassi, Forbes, 12 Jan. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Genre.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/genre. Accessed 17 Jan. 2025.
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genre
noun
French
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