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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kaparthy, post: 3930422, member: 57463&quot;]Wikipedia has some etymology - citing the New York Times, oddly enough - but the best I found quickly was from Mirriam-Webster:</p><p><br /></p><p><font face="Book Antiqua"><font size="5">The belief system of the ancient Romans included spirits that were somewhere in between gods and humans and were thought to accompany each person through life as a protector. The Latin name for this spirit was genius, which came from the verb gignere, meaning &quot;to beget.&quot; This sense of &quot;attendant spirit&quot; was first borrowed into English in the 14th century. Part of such a spirit&#039;s role was to protect a person&#039;s moral character, and from that idea an extended sense developed in the 16th century meaning &quot;an identifying character.&quot; In time, that meaning was extended to cover a special ability for doing something, and eventually genius acquired senses referring particularly to &quot;very great intelligence&quot; and &quot;people of great intelligence.&quot;</font></font></p><p><font face="Book Antiqua"><font size="5"><i><a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/genius" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/genius" rel="nofollow">https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/genius</a></i></font></font></p><p><font face="Book Antiqua"><font size="5"><br /></font></font></p><p>About the verb <i><b>gigenere</b></i>, allow me to offer this. In college, our German professor did not like to speak the language and we did a lot of translation while he offered asides on <b>philology</b> (his Rhodes Scholarship). There&#039;s a thing in Indo-European languages about doubling the first syllable to intensify the meaning. The verb is <i>genere</i> - generative; genitive; gens=family, etc., etc.&nbsp; gi-genere would be some more powerful meaning, i.e., as you note, the spirit that gives you power to generate.&nbsp; We see the same thing in words like PEpper (ach-oo!), and POpulus PO-puli (poli poli very many) people, populace, etc. </p><p><br /></p><p>(You know... since no one asked...)[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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