Definition of PROGENY

The Lineage of Progeny

Progeny is the progeny of the Latin verb progignere, meaning "to beget." That Latin word is itself an offspring of the prefix pro-, meaning "forth," and gignere, which can mean "to beget" or "to bring forth." Gignere has produced a large family of English descendants, including benign (meaning "mild" or "harmless"), congenital (meaning "inherent"), engine, genius, germ, indigenous, ingenuous, and malign. Gignere even paired up with pro- again to produce a close relative of progeny: the noun progenitor, which can mean "an ancestor in the direct line," "a biologically ancestral form," or "a precursor or originator."

Examples of progeny in a Sentence

Many Americans are the progeny of immigrants. The small plants are the progeny of an oak tree. Their work is the progeny of many earlier studies.

Recent Examples on the Web

Most bulls have fewer, though their progeny still number in the thousands. — Maureen O’hagan, Quartz, "The way we breed cows is setting them up for extinction," 24 June 2019 Most bulls have fewer, though their progeny still number in the thousands. — Maureen O’hagan, Quartz, "The way we breed cows is setting them up for extinction," 24 June 2019 Most bulls have fewer, though their progeny still number in the thousands. — Maureen O'hagan, Scientific American, "From Two Bulls, Nine Million Dairy Cows," 20 June 2019 But there is also considerable resistance to Orientalism and its progeny. — Adam Shatz, The New York Review of Books, "‘Orientalism,’ Then and Now," 20 May 2019 But Begun and collaborators found several genes that were present in only one or two species and not others, suggesting that these genes weren’t the progeny of existing ancestors. — Quanta Magazine, "A Surprise Source of Life’s Code," 18 Aug. 2015 And as the ultrarich boost philanthropy to universities, the price for giving their progeny an admissions edge has escalated correspondingly. — Daniel Golden, Town & Country, "How Wealthy Families Manipulate Admissions at Elite Universities," 21 Nov. 2016 His staff dissuaded him from unloading on Bannon after a critical Vanity Fair piece before the holidays, but the final straw came when his former chief strategist publicly unloaded on his progeny. — James Hohmann, Washington Post, "The Daily 202: Trump’s break with Bannon over Wolff book shows the limits of loyalty," 4 Jan. 2018 Just like Lucas’ films, which frame Anakin Skywalker and his progeny as the literal Chosen Ones, the single most important people in the galaxy, Crimes of Grindelwald falls into the exceptionalism trap. — Chaim Gartenberg, The Verge, "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is the franchise’s Attack of the Clones when it should be The Last Jedi," 27 Nov. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'progeny.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.