genuine
- 1Authentic and real, not counterfeit, false, or mixed with inferior material.
Experts confirmed the signature was genuine after a careful analysis.
Customers pay more for genuine maple syrup than for the artificial kind.
Similarauthentic, real, original, legitimate, true
Oppositefake, counterfeit, false, artificial
Note
The everyday sense, and one that reaches past objects to feelings: a genuine text or genuine materials, but also genuine friendship. Its fixed phrase is the genuine article, meaning the real thing as opposed to a substitute. Violet Tweedale uses it in Lady Sarah's Son (1906) for the item a customer forgets once the bijoutry catches her eye. Where the "native stock" meaning concerns descent, this one concerns honesty of substance.
- 2Belonging to or descended from the original stock; of pure native origin.
The farm prides itself on raising genuine highland cattle, descended from the original herd.
Botanists prized the genuine native fern, untouched by hybridization.
Similarpurebred, pure, true, authentic
Oppositehybrid, crossbred, mixed
Note
The sense that stays closest to the Latin: genuīnus meant "innate, native, natural," and it comes from genus, ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European root. Here the word is about lineage rather than honesty. It describes a herd, a plant line or a people that has come down unmixed from its source. It now belongs mostly to breeding and botany, where pedigree matters more than authenticity.
Practice
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Origin
From Latin genuīnus ("innate, native, natural"), from genus, going back to Proto-Indo-European *ǵenh₁-.