Definition of "genre" []

• A type or class: "Emaciated famine victims ... on television focused a new genre of attention on the continent” ( Helen Kitchen). (noun)
• A category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, marked by a distinctive style, form, or content: "his six String Quartets ... the most important works in the genre since Beethoven's” ( Time). (noun)
• A realistic style of painting that depicts scenes from everyday life. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The great gestures, the large-scale maps, the grand manner are for history and epic, but genre for the novel -- and what _genre_ is so momentous to it as the human?"
• "Writers making serious dough in genre is good news for everyone."
• "The traditional meaning of the term genre has been distorted."