generation
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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10 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "generation", 10-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "generation" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "generation" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
generation is aEnglishnoun. It means: The act of creating something or bringing something into being; production, creation. Pronounced /ˌd͡ʒɛnəˈɹeɪʃən/. It ranks #1,601 in English word frequency. Often confused with generator and generative.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | generation |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˌd͡ʒɛnəˈɹeɪʃən/ |
| Letters | 10 |
| Frequency rank | #1,601 |
| Misspellings tracked | 15 |
| Confusable pairs | 4 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for generation is 10 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˌd͡ʒɛnəˈɹeɪʃən/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,601 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 12 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 15 documented wrong-spelling variants for generation, with forms such as "egneration", "geenration", and "geneartion". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 4 confusable-pair relationships, "generator", "generative", "generations", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Inherited from Middle English generacioun, from Anglo-Norman generacioun, Middle French generacion, and their source, Latin generātiō, from generāre (“to beget, generate”). By surface analysis, generate + -ion. Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is generation, spelled G-E-N-E-R-A-T-I-O-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The act of creating something or bringing something into being; production, creation.
- 2The act of creating a living creature or organism; procreation.
- 3Race, family; breed.
- 4A 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.
- 5Descendants, progeny; offspring.
- 6The 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.
- 7A set stage in the development of computing or of a specific technology.
- 8The formation or production of any geometrical magnitude, as a line, a surface, a solid, by the motion, in accordance with a mathematical law, of a point or a magnitude, by the motion of a point, of a surface by a line, a sphere by a semicircle, etc.
- 9A group of people born in a specific range of years and whose members can relate culturally to one another.
- 10A version of a form of pop culture which differs from later or earlier versions.
- 11A copy of a recording made from an earlier copy.
- 12A single iteration of a cellular automaton rule on a pattern.
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English generacioun, from Anglo-Norman generacioun, Middle French generacion, and their source, Latin generātiō, from generāre (“to beget, generate”). By surface analysis, generate + -ion.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: egneration,geenration,geneartion,generaiton,generasion,generatino,generationn,generatoin,generattion,generration,genertaion,genneration,genreation,ggeneration,gneeration
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for generation
Misspelling Variants of "generation"
Frequency rank: #1,601 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter G in our English index: