engender
verb
Did you know?
A good paragraph about engender will engender understanding in the reader. Like its synonym generate, engender comes from the Latin verb generare, meaning “to generate” or “to beget,” and when the word was first used in the 14th century, engender meant “propagate” or “procreate.” That literal meaning having to do with creating offspring (which generate shared when it was adopted in the early 16th century) was soon joined by the “to cause to exist or develop; to produce” meaning most familiar to us today. Generare didn’t just engender generate and engender; regenerate, degenerate, and generation have the same Latin root. As you might suspect, the list of engender relatives does not end there. Generare comes from the Latin noun genus, meaning “origin” or “kind.” From this source we took our own word genus, plus gender, general, and generic, among other words.
Examples of engender in a Sentence
Eric Lach, New Yorker, 8 June 2025
The murder of United Health care CEO Brian Thompson did engender a sense of outrage — not at the act, but at the arrest of alleged shooter Luigi Mangione.
—Boston Herald Editorial Staff, Boston Herald, 1 June 2025
He’s even begun to engender himself to his new receivers coach Robert Prince.
—C. Isaiah Smalls Ii, Miami Herald, 22 May 2025
This is about cruelty and power and fear engendered by the Trump administration.
—Khaleda Rahman, MSNBC Newsweek, 3 June 2025
See All Example Sentences for engender
Cite this Entry
“Engender.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/engender. Accessed 9 Jul. 2025.
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engender
verb
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