Begat, Beget, Begot:Words built on GEN

🧑‍🧑‍🧒

Root of the Week for 12/08/25

In Latin, “generare” means “to beget” (give birth to). Therefore, many words containing gen relate to the idea of family— the begetting of people, animals, or things.  And to beget is another way to say “to produce,” so words that contain gen often refer to things that produce something. The Latin root GEN appears in many English words.

MONDAY - Gene (noun)

A gene is a unit of hereditary information that passes from parents to offspring and governs various traits, such as eye color, height, and susceptibility to certain diseases. It makes sense, therefore, that the word progenitor, formed from the prefix “pro” (meaning forward) and gen, refers to an ancestor or parent. The gene is, in effect, carried forward through successive generations.

TUESDAY - Engender (verb)

To engender something is to cause it to exist. Clearly this relates to the Latin word “generare,” meaning “to beget.” But not only organisms can be engendered: one can engender good will—or animosity—through one’s behavior toward others.

WEDNESDAY - Generate / Regenerate / Degenerate (verb)

To generate is to produce something. A generator is a machine that can use mechanical energy to produce electricity.  When we add the prefix “re” (meaning again) to generate, we get regenerate, which means to re-grow something. When an octopus loses one of its arms, it can regenerate its limb, growing a replacement part. If we add the prefix “de,” meaning “off” or “away from,” to generate, we get a less happy result: to degenerate is to decline, to sink to a corrupted or diseased state. A disappointed movie reviewer might claim that an initially promising film degenerated into a trite, incoherent mess.  The word degenerate is also used as a pejorative noun: if you call someone a degenerate, you are implying something dark about that person’s character.

THURSDAY - Genre / Generic (adjective)

Because gen relates to families, words that contain gen also refer to non-human groups or categories. For example, genre is another word for category. Rap is one genre of music, poetry is one genre of literature, horror movies are one genre of film. When people refer to genre fiction, they mean the types of novels that clearly belong to a category, such as detective fiction. Something is said to be generic if it has all the qualities typical of its category. Often this word is dismissive: if something is labelled as merely generic, it is unoriginal, predictable, mediocre. But generic drugs are often very welcome since a generic drug is a medication that is chemically identical to a patented drug but can be obtained more cheaply.

FRIDAY - Carcinogen (adjective)

In Greek,” a karkinos is a cancer.  Latin picks up this word from the Greeks, using the word “carcinoma” to refer to malignant tumors. In English, the word carcinogen means something that generates or causes cancer. Both synthetic and natural substances can be carcinogenic, including tobacco, asbestos, and radiation. If we add the prefix “anti” (meaning against) to carcinogen, we get anticarcinogenic, referring to something that can prevent or counteract the growth of a cancer.