gen-, means (as a verb) nothing more specific than “to come or bring into being” or (as a noun) anything new “brought into being.” Applied to people, it can assume alternative meanings. One meaning is the family generation: everyone brought into being by the same biological parent—used in such phrases as “fourth-generation” heir. The other meaning is the social generation: everyone brought into being by nature or society around the same time. Social generations refer to entire peer groups, as when the New Testament speaks of “a faithless and perverse generation” or the poet Hesiod of
...more
