# genius

Pronunciation: US say "JEEN-yuhs" /ˈd͡ʒin.jəs/; UK say "JEE-nee-uhs" /ˈd͡ʒiː.ni.əs/

## Noun

1. A person of extraordinary intelligence or skill, especially one who has shown it through original or creative work in science, music, or art.
   - Simple: A person with unusual intelligence or skill, often shown by creative or original work.
   - _Mozart is remembered as a musical genius who composed symphonies as a child._
   - _Only a true genius could have unified those two branches of physics._
2. Exceptional natural ability to think or create, or the brilliant inspiration that shows it.
   - Simple: A very rare and great ability to think or create, or a flash of brilliant thinking.
   - _Even as a young child, she showed a genius for mathematics that astonished her teachers._
   - _Critics repeatedly praised the genius of the composer's later works._
4. The special nature or essential spirit of a place, people, language, design, or similar thing, especially the feature that makes it effective or remarkable.
   - Simple: The special nature of something, especially the part that makes it work well or stand out.
   - _The genius of the new bridge design lies in how few parts it needs._
   - _She argued that the genius of the language is its readiness to borrow words from everyone it meets._

## Adjective

3. Remarkably clever, ingenious, or original, used to praise an idea or solution as brilliantly smart. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: Very clever, smart, or original in a way that impresses people.
   - _Folding the map that way was a genius solution to the space problem._
   - _Everyone agreed that her marketing strategy was genius._

## Other meanings

- (noun) A guardian deity or guiding spirit attached to a person, place, or institution.

## Origin

English took genius straight from Latin, where it meant "inborn nature", "a guardian deity of a person or place" and "wit, brilliance". The Latin word comes from gignō ("to beget, produce"), earlier Old Latin genō, which is built on the Proto-Indo-European root *ǵenh₁-, and genius is a doublet of genio and related to genus.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/genius (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).