engender
verb
Did you know?
A good paragraph about engender will engender understanding in the reader. Like its synonym generate, engender comes from the Latin verb generare, meaning “to generate” or “to beget,” and when the word was first used in the 14th century, engender meant “propagate” or “procreate.” That literal meaning having to do with creating offspring (which generate shared when it was adopted in the early 16th century) was soon joined by the “to cause to exist or develop; to produce” meaning most familiar to us today. Generare didn’t just engender generate and engender; regenerate, degenerate, and generation have the same Latin root. As you might suspect, the list of engender relatives does not end there. Generare comes from the Latin noun genus, meaning “origin” or “kind.” From this source we took our own word genus, plus gender, general, and generic, among other words.
Examples of engender in a Sentence
Marcus Jones, IndieWire, 1 May 2026
Embedded in their value is that the Padres are now the only game in town, literally, which engenders fan support.
—Phillip Molnar, San Diego Union-Tribune, 29 Apr. 2026
Unfortunately, Trump’s bullying style of diplomacy does not engender a willingness by allies and friends to step forward and provide assistance to our efforts in Iran.
—Tom Jurkowsky, Baltimore Sun, 25 Apr. 2026
And that just engendered a whole body of work around discovery in MS.
—Marcy Thompson, Scientific American, 16 Apr. 2026
See All Example Sentences for engender
Cite this Entry
“Engender.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/engender. Accessed 5 May. 2026.
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engender
verb
