generation

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. All of the offspring that are at the same stage of descent from a common ancestor: Mother and daughters represent two generations.
2. n. Biology A form or stage in the life cycle of an organism: asexual generation of a fern.
3. n. The average interval of time between the birth of parents and the birth of their offspring.
4. n. A group of individuals born and living about the same time.
5. n. A group of generally contemporaneous individuals regarded as having common cultural or social characteristics and attitudes: "They're the television generation” ( Roger Enrico).
6. n. A stage or period of sequential technological development and innovation.
7. n. A class of objects derived from a preceding class: a new generation of computers.
8. n. The formation of a line or geometric figure by the movement of a point or line.
9. n. The act or process of generating; origination, production, or procreation.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The act, process, or function of generating or begetting; procreation; propagation; reproduction; multiplication of kind. The modes of generation in the animal kingdom are reducible to four leading types: fission, sporation, gemmation, and sexual generation. (See these words, and conjugation.) Another division is into sexual or gamic generation, which prevails in all the higher animals and in most others, and asexual or non-sexual or agamic generation. Many variations in the mode of generation, chiefly sexual, are expressed by such terms as fissiparous, gemmiparous, larviparous, oviparous, ovoviviparous, pupiparous, viviparous. (See these words and the corresponding abstract nouns.) See genesis, 1.
2. n. In theology, the communication of the Divine Essence from God the Father to God the Son. The catholic or orthodox Trinitarian doctrine is that God the Son is a distinct person, truly God and of the same essence as the Father, and is therefore existent in his own personality as the Son from all eternity to all eternity, and that the divine act of generation is accordingly itself eternal or without beginning and without end: in opposition to the Arian teaching, that “there was formerly a time when he [Christ] was not, and that before being begotten he was not.” The person or hypostasis of God the Son being “the express image [or impress, χαρακτήρ] of his [God the Father′ s] person (ὑπόστασ, σ1ις)” (Heb. i. 3.), the communication of essence is that of a father to a son, and is accordingly begetting or generation; whereas the communication of the Divine Essence to the Holy Spirit is simply procession.
3. n. A bringing out or forth; evolution, as from a source or cause; production, especially by some natural process or causation: as, the generation of sounds.
4. n. In mathematics, the description of a geometrical figure by the motion of a point, line, plane, or figure, in accordance with a mathematical law. Also genesis.
5. n. That which is generated; progeny; offspring.
6. n. A single succession of living beings in natural descent, as the offspring or descendants in the same degree of the same parents.
7. n. The whole body of persons of the same period or living at the same time: as, the present generation.
8. n. Family; race; kind; by extension, any allied or associated group of persons; a class.
9. n. The age or period of a generation; hence, the average lifetime of all persons of synchronous age. The historical average, or that of all who pass the stage of infancy, is commonly reckoned at about thirty years, while the physiological average, or that of all who are born, is only about seventeen years.
10. n. Same as spontaneous generation
11. n. The individuals of a given mineral species which have been formed at the same time and under similar conditions, as in the solidification of an igneous rock, or the deposits in a mineral vein.

Wiktionary

1. n. The act of generating or begetting; procreation, as of animals.
2. n. Origination by some process, mathematical, chemical, or vital; production; formation; as, the generation of sounds, of gases, of curves, etc
3. n. That which is generated or brought forth; progeny; offspring.
4. n. A period of around thirty years, the average amount of time before a child takes the place of its parents.
5. n. A single step or stage in the succession of natural descent; a rank or remove in genealogy, or collectively the body of people who are of the same genealogical rank or remove from an ancestor; the mass of beings living at one time.
6. n. Race; kind; family; breed; stock.
7. n. geometry The formation or production of any geometrical magnitude, as a line, a surface, a solid, by the motion, in accordance with a mathematical law, of a point or a magnitude; as, the generation of a line or curve by the motion of a point, of a surface by a line, a sphere by a semicircle, etc.
8. n. biology The aggregate of the functions and phenomena which attend reproduction.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The act of generating or begetting; procreation, as of animals.
2. n. Origination by some process, mathematical, chemical, or vital; production; formation.
3. n. That which is generated or brought forth; progeny; offspiring.
4. n. A single step or stage in the succession of natural descent; a rank or remove in genealogy. Hence: The body of those who are of the same genealogical rank or remove from an ancestor; the mass of beings living at one period; also, the average lifetime of man, or the ordinary period of time at which one rank follows another, or father is succeeded by child, usually assumed to be one third of a century; an age.
5. n. Race; kind; family; breed; stock.
6. n. (Geom.) The formation or production of any geometrical magnitude, as a line, a surface, a solid, by the motion, in accordance with a mathematical law, of a point or a magnitude
7. n. (Biol.) The aggregate of the functions and phenomene which attend reproduction.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. all the people living at the same time or of approximately the same age
2. n. the production of heat or electricity
3. n. the act of producing offspring or multiplying by such production
4. n. the normal time between successive generations
5. n. group of genetically related organisms constituting a single step in the line of descent
6. n. a coming into being
7. n. a stage of technological development or innovation