the act of generating or begetting; procreation, as of animals.-origination by some process, mathematical, chemical, or vital; production; formation; as, the generation of sounds, of gases, of curves, etc.-that which is generated or brought forth; progeny; offspiring.-a single step or stage in the succession of natural descent; a rank or remove in genealogy. hence: the body of those who are of the same genealogical rank or remove from an ancestor; the mass of beings living at one period; also, the average lifetime of man, or the ordinary period of time at which one rank follows another, or father is succeeded by child, usually assumed to be one third of a century; an age.-race; kind; family; breed; stock.-the formation or production of any geometrical magnitude, as a line, a surface, a solid, by the motion, in accordance with a mathematical law, of a point or a magnitude; as, the generation of a line or curve by the motion of a point, of a surface by a line, a sphere by a semicircle, etc.-the aggregate of the functions and phenomene which attend reproduction.