genre

Tweet

noun \ˈzhän-rə, ˈzhäⁿ-; ˈzhäⁿr; ˈjän-rə\

: a particular type or category of literature or art

Full Definition of GENRE

1

:  a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content

2

:  kind, sort

3

:  painting that depicts scenes or events from everyday life usually realistically

True or False? Play our trivia
game for a fun break. »

Examples of GENRE

1. This book is a classic of the mystery genre.
2. <the novel's hero is of a different genre than the traditional kind>
3. In genre fiction there is an implied contract between writer and reader that justice of a kind will be exacted; “good” may not always triumph over “evil,” but the distinction between the two must be honored. —Joyce Carol Oates, New York Review of Books, 14 Aug. 2003
4. 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
5. 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

Origin of GENRE

French, from Middle French, kind, gender — more at gender

First Known Use: 1770

Related to GENRE

Synonyms

breed, class, description, feather, sort, ilk, kidney, kind, like, manner, nature, order, species, strain, stripe, type, variety

Related Words

model; sample, specimen; bracket, bunch, category, division, family, grade, group, grouping, lot, persuasion, rank(s), set, suite

Other Literature Terms

apophasis, bathos, bildungsroman, bowdlerize, caesura, coda, doggerel, euphemism, poesy, prosody