John Milton
Vicki Baum 
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Warm, cheerful, and pleasant? That’s genial in a bottle, baby. Or at least (if such a declaration rubs you the wrong way) that’s the most common sense of genial. You may also be familiar with its closely related meaning of “favorable to growth or comfort” as in “what a girl wants most on vacation is to recline in the genial sunshine.” Or perhaps you’ve heard genial used to describe someone or something displaying or marked by genius, as in “who among us doesn’t appreciate genial insights embedded in a beautiful pop song”? After all, both genial and genius share an ancestor in the Latin word genius, meaning “a person’s disposition or inclination.” There are also older, now-obsolete senses of genial. When it first entered English from the Latin adjective genialis (“connected with marriage”) it shared that word’s matrimonial meaning. And at one time genial was also a synonym of native or inborn, describing things (such as musical talent) present or seemingly present in someone from birth.
Examples of genial in a Sentence
Melissa Ruggieri, USA Today, 14 June 2026
Hudson has also stacked up more than 50 feature film roles, including 2023's genial sports comedy Champions, 2026's Toy Story 5, and the recent Ghostbusters films.
—Declan Gallagher, Entertainment Weekly, 8 June 2026
What’s evident from the start, though, is the mix of goofiness and genial weirdness that would become her trademark.
—Jeremy Lybarger, Artforum, 2 June 2026
O’Farrell’s sentences — the musicality of her repetitions, the genial warmth of her narration, the visceral pleasures of her imagery — offer comfort against the backdrop of heartbreak so common to her fiction.
—Rachel Vorona Cote, Vulture, 2 June 2026
See All Example Sentences for genial
Cite this Entry
“Genial.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/genial. Accessed 25 Jun. 2026.
Copy CitationMedical Definition
genial
adjective
