: painting that depicts scenes or events from everyday life usually realistically
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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.
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. 2003One 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. 2002Even 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
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The genre first took root in the 1930s with radio quiz programs like Professor Quiz and Information Please before making the leap to television — and it's been a pop culture staple ever since.—Lindsay Soll, EW.com, 25 July 2025 This same thing is true when inventing new or combining genres in writing.—Matthew Clark Davison, Literary Hub, 25 July 2025 Has the mainstream music industry found Jesus Christ? Brittany talks with University of Michigan-Dearborn Professor Emerita Dr. Deborah Smith Pollard and Christianity Today reporter Kelsey Kramer McGinnis to understand the multi-million dollar machine behind the Christian Contemporary Music genre.—Corey Antonio Rose, NPR, 25 July 2025 The genre was also caught in a tonal tussle between light and dark.—Richard Edwards, Space.com, 25 July 2025 See All Example Sentences for genre
Word History
Etymology
French, from Middle French, kind, gender — more at gender
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