generations

Noun

generation (countable and uncountable, plural generations)

1. The act of creating something or bringing something into being; production, creation.
   • The generation of peat, when not completely under water, is confined to moist situations […]1832, Charles Lyell, chapter XIII, in Principles of Geology […] , volume II, London: John Murray, page 210
2. The act of creating a living creature or organism; procreation.
   • So all things else, that nourish vitall blood, / Soone as with fury thou doest them inspire, / In generation seek to quench their inward fire.1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
3. (US, dialectal) Race, family; breed.
   • Thy Mothers of my generation: what's she, if I be a Dogge?c. 1605–1608 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Tymon of Athens”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
4. A single step or stage in the succession of natural descent; a rank or degree in genealogy, the members of a family from the same parents, considered as a single unit.
   • {{RQ:KJV|passage=This is the book of the generations of Adam|Genesis|5|1}
5. (Nigeria, obsolete) Descendants, progeny; offspring.
6. The average amount of time needed for children to grow up and have children of their own, generally considered to be a period of around thirty years, used as a measure of time.
   • Before the independence of India the books of Dr P. K. Yadav presented a fundamental challenge to the accepted ideas of race relations that, two generations later, will be true of the writings of the radical writers of the 1970s.2008, Edgar Thorpe, Objective English

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