genre
Americannoun
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genres
plural
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a class or category of artistic endeavor having a particular form, content, technique, or the like.
the genre of epic poetry; the genre of symphonic music.
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Fine Arts.
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paintings in which scenes of everyday life form the subject matter.
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a realistic style of painting using such subject matter.
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genus; kind; sort; style.
adjective
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Fine Arts. of or relating to genre.
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of or relating to a distinctive literary type.
noun
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kind, category, or sort, esp of literary or artistic work
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( as modifier )
genre fiction
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a category of painting in which domestic scenes or incidents from everyday life are depicted
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of genre
First recorded in 1760–70; from French: “kind, sort”; see gender 1
Explanation
A genre is a specific type of music, film, or writing. Your favorite literary genre might be science fiction, and your favorite film genre might be horror flicks about cheerleaders. Go figure. In music, genre refers to musical style such as jazz, salsa or rock. In film or literature, the genre is determined by the subject, setting or plot of the story. When you are wandering around a book store, books are usually arranged by genre. Many genres, such as "mystery" or "fantasy," overlap in film and literature, while others, such as "romantic comedy" in film or "historical fiction" in books, are specific to one or the other.
Vocabulary lists containing genre
Jim Burke's Academic Vocabulary List
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TEKS ELAR Academic Vocabulary List (5th-7th grades)
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The AP English Exam: Rhetorical and Literary Terms 3
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The genre is popular with viewers: 23 young adult titles made Netflix’s global top 10 list this year.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 14, 2026
They’ve surpassed $2 billion in sales for Starbucks, as they’ve launched an ever-sprawling genre of refresher varieties: water-based, lemonade-based, coconut milk–based, chili-dusted, frozen and blended.
From Slate ● Aug. 14, 2026
The genre dispute was represented by two rival record companies that defined 1990s hip-hop: Knight's Death Row Records and Sean "Diddy" Combs' Bad Boy Records.
From BBC ● Aug. 10, 2026
Schoenbrun has an obvious familiarity with the horror canon, and I would guess owns a dog-eared copy of “Men, Women, and Chainsaws,” Carol J. Clover’s classic book on the genre.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 6, 2026
The doctors decide it’s time for a new genre.
From "If I Stay" by Gayle Forman
He added that Sony is looking for ways to integrate gaming and anime, genres he said have a natural affinity.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026
A cohort of people who pursued and brought light to all genres of food stories.
From Salon ● Aug. 6, 2026
But as she employed them, they became perennial sources for multiple emerging genres.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 20, 2026
I did my research by listening to Luis Miguel, José José and singers and genres that I wasn’t used to listening to.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 20, 2026
There are now many book/CD combinations available to help the beginning improviser in many different genres and on many different instruments.
From "Understanding Basic Music Theory" by Catherine Schmidt-Jones and Russel Jones
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
