generate
English
Etymology
From Latin generātus, perfect passive participle of generō (“beget, procreate, produce”), from genus (“a kind, race, family”); see genus.
Verb
generate (third-person singular simple present generates, present participle generating, simple past and past participle generated)
- (transitive) To bring into being; give rise to.
- The discussion generated an uproar.
- 1966, Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, volume 1, page 126:
- The Ecclesiastical Commission was generated by Sir Robert Peel and bore the marks of Peel’s personality; bureaucratic, capable and cold.
- 2012 May 9, Jonathan Wilson, “Europa League: Radamel Falcao's Atlético Madrid rout Athletic Bilbao”, in the Guardian:
- In the last 20 minutes Athletic began to generate the sort of pressure of which they are capable, but by then it was far too late: the game had begun to slip away from them as early as the seventh minute.
- 2013 June 22, “T time”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 68:
- The ability to shift profits to low-tax countries by locating intellectual property in them […] is often assumed to be the preserve of high-tech companies. […] current tax rules make it easy for all sorts of firms to generate […] “stateless income”: profit subject to tax in a jurisdiction that is neither the location of the factors of production that generate the income nor where the parent firm is domiciled.
- (transitive) To produce as a result of a chemical or physical process.
- Adding concentrated sulphuric acid to water generates heat.
- (transitive) To procreate, beget.
- They generated many offspring.
- (transitive, mathematics) To form a figure from a curve or solid.
- Rotating a circle generates a sphere.
- (intransitive) To appear or occur; be generated.
- 1883, Thomas Hardy, The Three Strangers:
- Mrs. Fennel, seeing the steam begin to generate on the countenances of her guests, crossed over and touched the fiddler's elbow and put her hand on the serpent's mouth.
Antonyms
- (antonym(s) of “to bring into being”): abrogate, annihilate, degenerate, extinguish, obliterate, ungenerate
- (antonym(s) of “to produce as a result of a chemical or physical process”): erase
Derived terms
Related terms
Translations
to bring into being
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to produce as a result of a chemical or physical process
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to procreate, beget
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mathematics: to form a figure
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Further reading
- “generate”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
- “generate”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
Italian
Verb
generate
- inflection of generare:
- second-person plural present indicative/subjunctive
- second-person plural imperative
- feminine plural past participle
Latin
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