genre

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A type or class: "Emaciated famine victims ... on television focused a new genre of attention on the continent” ( Helen Kitchen).
2. n. A category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, marked by a distinctive style, form, or content: "his six String Quartets ... the most important works in the genre since Beethoven's” ( Time).
3. n. A realistic style of painting that depicts scenes from everyday life.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. Genus; kind; sort; style.
2. n. In painting, specifically, a representation of some phase of common life, as a domestic interior, a rural or village scene, etc. The term is sometimes used in the same sense with reference to sculpture and the drama. In French it is also applied with a descriptive epithet to other kinds of painting, as genre historique, the historical style; genre du paysage, the landscape style. In English writing it is most commonly used in combination as a descriptive term, either with or without a hyphen: as, genre pictures; a genre-painter.

Wiktionary

1. n. A kind; a stylistic category or sort, especially of literature or other artworks.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. Kind; genus; class; form; style, esp. in literature.
2. n. (Fine Arts) A style of painting, sculpture, or other imitative art, which illustrates everyday life and manners.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a kind of literary or artistic work
2. n. a class of art (or artistic endeavor) having a characteristic form or technique
3. n. a style of expressing yourself in writing
4. n. an expressive style of music