generic
Very broad; pertaining or appropriate to large classes or groups as opposed to specific instances.
Adjective
- Very broad; pertaining or appropriate to large classes or groups as opposed to specific instances.
- Capri pants can be a generic term for any cropped slim pants.
- […] the essence is that such self-describing poets describe what is in them, but not peculiar to them, – what is generic, not what is special and individual. - 1864, Walter Bagehot, “Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning;...
Antonyms: specific instantial
- Lacking in precision, often in an evasive fashion; vague; imprecise.
- Of a product or drug, not having a brand name; nonproprietary in design or contents; fungible with the rest of its class.
- The four-and-one-half-day trial was centered on acts that neither she nor prosecutors dispute: On July 13, 2012, she drove her Lexus S.U.V. erratically after swallowing Zolpidem, a generic form of the sleep medication...
- Pertaining to genera of life instead of particular species thereof.
- Holonym: familial
- Meronyms: infrasubspecific, infraspecific, subspecific, specific
- There are scores of generic names within the order Decapoda, which includes many sea creatures that are called shrimp.
- Specifying neither masculine nor feminine; epicene; unisex.
- Words like salesperson and firefighter are generic.
- This included criticism of the generic use of man to include men and women.
- Of a procedure, written so as to operate on any data type, the type required being passed as a parameter.
- Of a point, having coordinates that are algebraically independent over the base field.
- Relating to genre.
- Both [films] test formal and generic boundaries. - 2018, Nicole Seymour, Bad Environmentalism, page 47:
- Having no distinguishing characteristics; unoriginal.
- That movie was so generic; it was such a bore!
Origin
From Middle French générique, from Latin genus (“genus, kind”) + -ic.
Forms
Synonyms
broad general classic fuzzy indefinite unbranded catholic common ecumenical generic nonsingular nonspecific universal unparticular unsingular unspecific
Antonyms
specific particular concrete non-generic proprietary branded gendered
Related
Derived
bigeneric biogeneric cogeneric extrageneric Generica generically generic class generic element generic epithet generic function genericide generic interval genericise genericism genericity genericization genericize generic name genericness generic platformer generic programming generic property generic term generic they
Noun
- A product sold under a generic name.
- A wine that is a combination of several wines, or made from a combination of several grape varieties.
Synonyms: blend
Antonyms: varietal
- A term that specifies neither male nor female.
- […]a male-centered perspective[…]has resulted in false generics in everyday life[…] - 1998, Jacqueline A. Dienemann, Nursing administration: managing patient care:
- The part of a toponym that identifies the feature's type.
- Where the generic of an English-language place name has been translated into French, it is essential to restore it to its original English form when translating the French document into English. - 2024 July 29,...
Antonyms: specific