Generates

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To cause something to come into existence or to produce energy or ideas
2. To bring about or create an effect, result, or material output
3. To generate means to make or produce something, whether it is power, thoughts, or an outcome

Etymology: This is an inflected form of "generate", so the verb itself is what matters. "Generate" is a learned borrowing from Latin "generatus", the past participle of "generare", meaning "to beget, procreate, produce". That Latin verb is built from "genus", meaning "a kind, race, or family", which is the same root that gives English words such as "genre" and "gender". The original sense was biological: to bring offspring into being. The key shift is from parent to product. Latin speakers used the verb for begetting children, and English gradually extended it to anything that comes into being through a process, from electricity and heat to ideas and data. The surprising connection is "gender", which was once a verb in English meaning to engender or breed, and shares the same Latin root through a French route. Today's sense of producing output carries that old notion of bringing something new into existence from something already present.

Synonyms: produces, creates

Antonyms: destroys, eliminates