generic
Noun pluralgenerics
Pluralgenerics
- 1Sold without a brand name and interchangeable with others of the same kind; nonproprietary in design or contents.
Most pharmacies stock generic equivalents that contain the same active ingredients as branded drugs.
She filled her cart with generic staples to keep the grocery bill down.
Similarunbranded, nonproprietary, no-name
Oppositebranded, proprietary
Note
A label for products and especially drugs that carry the same contents without the name. The handy construction is a generic form of a branded product. In Joseph Berger's 2014 report, Zolpidem is 'a generic form of the sleep medication Ambien.' The weight falls on interchangeability, not lower quality. Used as a noun, the word becomes a generic, the product itself.
- 2Very broad; relating or suited to a whole class or group rather than to specific instances.
The report offered only generic recommendations that would fit any company.
Such broad, generic categories ignore the differences between individual cases.
Similargeneral, broad, blanket, universal, sweeping
Oppositespecific
Note
Latin genus, 'kind,' sits under this sense. The word came through Middle French générique and is a doublet of general, built the same way from the same root. Its natural opposite is specific. Walter Bagehot drew the line sharply in 1864, setting what is generic in a poet against 'what is special and individual.' Generic suits classes; specific and individual suit cases.
- 3Lacking distinctive features; unoriginal and hard to tell apart from others of its kind.
The album was dismissed as generic pop with no memorable hooks.
Every house on the street had the same generic design.
Similarbland, unoriginal, nondescript, formulaic, derivative
Oppositedistinctive, original, unique, individual
- 4Lacking precision, often in an evasive way; vague and noncommittal.
The spokesperson offered a generic statement that sidestepped the actual question.
His feedback was so generic that it gave the writer nothing to work with.
Similarvague, noncommittal, bland, nonspecific, evasive
- 5A product marketed under its common name rather than under a brand name.
The doctor said a generic would work just as well as the name-brand pill.
Supermarket generics often come from the same factories as branded goods.
- 6Of code, written to operate on any data type, with the required type supplied as a parameter.
The library provides a generic container that works with any object type.
Using generic methods, the developers avoided rewriting the same logic for each data type.
Similarparameterized, polymorphic, templated
Oppositeconcrete, specialized
Note
A programmer's word for code written once and reused across types. A generic container or method takes its type as a parameter, bound when the code is instantiated or called, so the same logic serves any data type without being rewritten. The adjective describes the procedure or structure, not the data passing through it.
- 7Relating to genre, the recognized categories and conventions that define types of art or writing.
Her thesis examined the generic conventions of gothic fiction.
The film plays with generic expectations before subverting them.
Note
A critic's adjective, and an easy one to misread: generic boundaries are the lines between kinds of work, not a verdict that the work is bland. It pairs naturally with formal, as in Nicole Seymour's Bad Environmentalism (2018), where two films "test formal and generic boundaries." Latin genus, "kind," sits behind it. Outside criticism, readers may hear the "unoriginal" meaning, so where that matters, "genre conventions" says the same thing more safely.
- 8Relating to or concerned with gender.
- 9Pertaining to a genus rather than to the particular species within it.
In the binomial system, the generic name comes first and is capitalized.
Botanists debated the generic placement of the newly discovered shrub.
Oppositespecific
Note
Taxonomy's ranks give the adjective its exact meaning: generic answers to genus as specific answers to species, with familial above and infraspecific and subspecific below. A generic name is the first, capitalized half of a binomial and is shared by every species in the genus. That is why an order like Decapoda can hold scores of generic names.
- 10Specifying neither masculine nor feminine; suitable for either sex; unisex.
Many writers now prefer generic pronouns when the person's gender is unknown.
The form used a generic title rather than Mr. or Ms.
Similarunisex, neutral, epicene, gender-neutral
Oppositegendered, gender-specific
Note
A grammar label for words that cover both sexes, such as salesperson and firefighter, though the use is marked nonstandard. In careful technical writing, epicene does the same job. The phrase generic use of man names a familiar dispute: whether man can honestly stand for men and women.
- 11A word or expression that specifies neither male nor female reference.
"Server" has largely replaced the gendered pair as the preferred generic.
Many languages lack convenient generics for professions.
Note
Its sharpest use comes in the phrase false generic: a word that claims to cover everyone but is built on the male. Jacqueline A. Dienemann's Nursing administration (1998) traces false generics in everyday life to 'a male-centered perspective.' The classic case is man used for men and women. A true generic, like sibling or spouse, really does include both.
- 12The element of a place name that identifies the type of geographic feature, such as "River" or "Mountain."
In "Mississippi River," the generic distinguishes the waterway from the state of the same name.
Toponymists catalog the generics that recur across a region's place names.
Oppositespecific
Note
To a toponymist, a place name has two parts: the specific that singles it out (Mississippi) and the generic that classifies it (River). The distinction matters in translation. Writing Tips Plus (2024), published in Ottawa, warns that an English generic rendered into French must be restored to its English form when the document is translated back into English.
- 13In algebraic geometry, having coordinates that are algebraically independent over the base field.
The argument holds for a generic point of the variety, where no extra algebraic relations occur.
Choosing generic parameters ensures the equations stay independent.
Oppositespecial
Note
Algebraic geometers say it of a point, as in generic point. Its coordinates satisfy no polynomial relation over the base field beyond those that hold identically. The point is therefore typical of the whole variety rather than sitting on some special closed subset. An argument proved at a generic point is meant to hold in general, which is where the everyday sense still shows through.
- 14A wine blended from several wines or made from a mix of different grape varieties.
The house generic paired well with almost any dish on the menu.
Bargain generics often combine grapes from across a whole region.
Similarblend
Oppositevarietal
Note
Wine divides along this line: a generic is a blend, while its opposite, a varietal, comes from a single grape. Generics are often sold under a regional or proprietary name rather than a grape name. The word marks a category of winemaking, not a verdict on quality, and blend is its plain synonym.
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Practice
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Origin
From Middle French générique, from Latin genus ("genus, kind") plus the suffix -ic. It is thus formed in parallel with, and is a doublet of, the word general.