Webster
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Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Generation

Gen′er·a′tion (jĕn′ẽr·ā′shŭn), n. [OE. generacioun, F. génération, fr.L. generatio.] 1. The act of generating or begetting; procreation, as of animals.

2. Origination by some process, mathematical, chemical, or vital; production; formation; as, the generation of sounds, of gases, of curves, etc.

3. That which is generated or brought forth; progeny; offspiring.

4. A single step or stage in the succession of natural descent; a rank or remove in genealogy. Hence: The body of those who are of the same genealogical rank or remove from an ancestor; the mass of beings living at one period; also, the average lifetime of man, or the ordinary period of time at which one rank follows another, or father is succeeded by child, usually assumed to be one third of a century; an age.

This is the book of the generations of Adam. Gen. v. 1.

Ye shall remain there [in Babylon] many years, and for a long season, namely, seven generations. Baruch vi. 3.

All generations and ages of the Christian church. Hooker.

5. Race; kind; family; breed; stock.

Thy mother's of my generation; what's she, if I be a dog? Shak.

6. (Geom.) The 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; as, the generation of a line or curve by the motion of a point, of a surface by a line, a sphere by a semicircle, etc.

7. (Biol.) The aggregate of the functions and phenomene which attend reproduction.

☞ There are four modes of generation in the animal kingdom: scissiparity or by fissiparous generation, gemmiparity or by budding, germiparity or by germs, and oviparity or by ova.

Alternate generation (Biol.), alternation of sexual with asexual generation, in which the products of one process differ from those of the other, — a form of reproduction common both to animal and vegetable organisms. In the simplest form, the organism arising from sexual generation produces offspiring unlike itself, agamogenetically. These, however, in time acquire reproductive organs, and from their impregnated germs the original parent form is reproduced. In more complicated cases, the first series of organisms produced agamogenetically may give rise to others by a like process, and these in turn to still other generations. Ultimately, however, a generation is formed which develops sexual organs, and the original form is reproduced. — Spontaneous generation (Biol.), the fancied production of living organisms without previously existing parents from inorganic matter, or from decomposing organic matter, a notion which at one time had many supporters; abiogenesis.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Noah Porter, editor (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913). Public domain. Text as transcribed by MICRA, Inc., from Project Gutenberg. Changed for Deep Dive Bible: Greek, which our source spelled in Latin letters, set in Greek letters; entries of one spelling merged into one article; Greek words our source left out (shown as “?”), read from the 1898 printing, from the same plates (the Library of Congress’s copy), where the place could be found with certainty. Of the others, 1,362 (a word or a single letter each) were inferred by AI from the context by the dictionary’s own rules and are marked with a wavy underline (tap or point at one to see the note); the rest, which could not be inferred with confidence, are left as “?”.