Generation

• Date: 14th century

Definitions

• 1 a : a body of living beings constituting a single step in the line of descent from an ancestor

b : a group of individuals born and living contemporaneously

c : a group of individuals having contemporaneously a status (as that of students in a school) which each one holds only for a limited period

d : a type or class of objects usually developed from an earlier type <first of the…new generation of powerful supersonic fighters — Kenneth Koyen>

• 2 a : the action or process of producing offspring : procreation

b : the process of coming or bringing into being <generation of income>

c : origination by a generating process : production; especially : formation of a geometric figure by motion of another

• 3 : the average span of time between the birth of parents and that of their offspring

Description

Generation (from the Latin generāre meaning to beget[1]), also known as procreation, is the act of producing offspring. In a more generic sense, it can also refer to the act of creating something inanimate such as electrical generation or cryptographic code generation.

A generation can also be a stage or degree in a succession of natural descent as a grandfather, a father, and the father's son comprise three generations. A generation can refer to stages of successive improvement in the development of a technology such as the internal combustion engine, or successive iterations of products with planned obsolescence, such as video game consoles or mobile phones.

In biology, the process by which populations of organisms pass on advantageous traits from generation to generation is known as evolution.