gen

Etymology 1

Clipping of general

noun

1. (chiefly Britain, informal) Information.
   Nose around any modest-sized station and the odds are you'll find that the chargeman's office doubles as a bashers' club, a place where shivering spotters can get warm and catch up on the gen. 2015, Nicholas Whittaker, Platform Souls: The Trainspotter as 20th-Century Hero
2. (birdwatching) Information about the location of a bird.
   I had some recent gen that they had been seen quite recently at Kunoth Well, a little dot on the map on the edge of the Tanami Desert. 2005, Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 172
3. (fandom slang) Fan fiction that does not specifically focus on romance or sex.

Etymology 2

noun

1. Alternative letter-case form of Gen (“member of the Gen Movement”)

Etymology 3

Shortened from generate and generator.

verb

1. To generate using an automated process, especially a computer program.
   Defining the devices so that they will be genned during the sysgen and installation is the other half. 1991, Bruce H. Hunter, Karen Bradford Hunter, UNIX Systems: Advanced Administration and Management Handbook
   The older, genned files are difficult to keep up-to-date and are unsupported for some newer NICs. 1993, Debra R. Niedermiller-Chaffins, Drew Heywood, Inside Novell NetWare, page 100
   As the capacities of the large servers are exceeded, a new server is genned into the RAC cluster. 2010, Donald K. Burleson, Oracle Tuning: The Definitive Reference, page 1109
   The Turing factories on Isis's small moon had fallen short of productivity goals, though another two factory units had been genned. 2012, Robert Charles Wilson, Bios

noun

1. (slang) A generator (device that converts mechanical to electrical energy).

Etymology 4

Shortened from genetic engineering

verb

1. (science fiction) To genetically engineer.
   Samples could be taken from the original, and plans could be made, but genning could not be initiated until death had occurred. 2008, Bart Dahmer, Primal Screams, page 36
   Her nurturer ears, genned to be hyper-sensitive, had to be hurting from the noise. 2011, Karen Sandler, Tankborn, page 28

Etymology 5

Etymology unknown. Possibilities include: * Clipping of argent * Clipping of generalise, from back slang for English shilling.

noun

1. (obsolete, UK, slang) A shilling.
   The betting also began to shift. "Sixpence Ned wins!" cried three or four; "Sixpence he loses!" answered another; "Done!" and up went the halfpence. "Half-a-crown Joe loses!"—"Here you are," answered Joe, but he lost again. "I'll try you a 'gen'" (shilling) said a coster; "And a 'rouf yenap'" (fourpence), added the other. "Say a 'exes'" (sixpence).—"Done!" and the betting continued, till the ground was spotted with silver and halfpence. 1851, Henry Mayhew, “Gambling of Costermongers”, in London Labour and the London Poor, volume 1, page 17
   "Give me two gen, then, and take the whole bloody tol. I've walked me teef orf afore rouf this mornin', and wot 'ave I got? Two bloody yenneps! I ask yer." 1978, Rose Ayers, The Street Sparrows

Etymology 6

Clipping of generation.

noun

1. (informal) A generation (group of people born in a specific range of years).
   "Mladenovic playing in what the young gen is calling a crop top, but what my gen is calling a bra," Bouchard tweeted. "Sign of the times that Wimbledon has no issue with that. Still can remember the year some had troubles because of 'too short' skirts lol." 2022-06-28, “Wimbledon tennis: Fans react to Kristina Mladenovic's eye-catching outfit”, in The New Zealand Herald
   It’s anyone’s guess whether such attitudes will persist into adulthood, but if Gen Z (and the gens to come) do prove more alco-skeptic than their forbears then the above twelve steps are deftly primed to cash in. 2022-07-04, Ben Schott, “Is There Anything That Gen Z Won’t Drink?”, in The Washington Post
2. (informal) A specific version of something in a chronological sequence.
   For my fellow first-gens, get ready to hide a smirk, because your life story is likely hidden somewhere in this chapter. For the uninitiated—that is, the person who's never had a thing to do with the Arab way of doing things (namely dating)—I advise you to buckle up. 2004, Sally Bishai, “Courtship, Marriage and the Ubiquitous ‘Dating Thing’”, in Mid-East Meets West: On Being and Becoming a Modern Arab American, Lincoln, Neb.: iUniverse, page 57
   […] I witness firsthand the difficult "downstream" outcomes (Grusky 2014) of social class stratification in a university setting where approximately 3,400 undergraduates (13% of the undergraduate population) are first in their families to attend and/or graduate from college (first-gens). Most of these students are low income and nearly 1,200 first-gens have grown up in poverty. 2016, Dwight Lang, “Witnessing Social Class in the Academy”, in Allison L. Hurst, Sandi Kawecka Nenga, editors, Working in Class: Recognizing How Social Class Shapes Our Academic Work, Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, part 2 (Teaching), page 102
   The Family Values and Framing Strategy steps address soft issues as what is the purpose of the new investment strategy, is there a desire to engage and train the next generation (Next Gens), and is there building buy-in and engagement across the family members important to strengthen family unity. 2017, Temple Fennell, “SCIE: Sustainable Cycle of Investing Engagement”, in Kirby Rosplock, The Complete Direct Investing Handbook: A Guide for Family Offices, Qualified Purchasers, and Accredited Investors (Bloomberg Financial Series), Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, page 242