genres

Word family

• genre
  nounB1
• genre
  adjectiveB2
• generic
  adjectiveB2
• generically
  adverbC1

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

While all five words describe a way of grouping things, genre is the most specific to arts and culture. Category is the broadest — you can put anything into a category (products, animals, ideas). Type is nearly as broad but sounds less formal; you might say 'what type of coffee do you like?' Style focuses on the manner or appearance rather than the classification itself: two books can belong to the same genre (e.g., mystery) but have very different writing styles. Form is most common in literary discussion for major structural divisions such as poetry, drama, and the novel. In everyday use, genre is the right word when talking about films, music, or books as belonging to a named tradition. ('I do not care much for the horror genre.' 'Which musical genre do you prefer, rock or hip-hop?')

Common collocations

Etymology

Borrowed from French 'genre' meaning 'kind, sort, gender', which comes from Latin 'genus' (stem gener-) meaning 'race, kind, family, birth, origin'. The word entered English in the early 1800s as an art-historical term for a type of painting, then broadened to cover all artistic categories.