• genius •
Pronunciation: jeen-yê:s • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun, adjective
Meaning: 1. Extraordinary mental power. 2. A person with extraordinary mental power, usually with an IQ above 140. 3. An exceptional aptitude or talent for something. 4. A person with such an exceptional aptitude for something, a wizard, savant, crackerjack, polyhistor. 5. An attendant spirit that determines the character and fortunes of a person or place (plural genii).
Notes: This is a word whose wide phonological and semantic wanderings have covered everything from gods to demons to smart and just affable people. The most likely accompanying adjective, genial, has come to mean "affable", so the noun is now used as an adjective. Remember, the spelling is NOT genious.
In Play: Although the technical test for genius is IQ, we now use the word for any extraordinary ability: "The kid is/has a genius for getting into trouble." The fifth, original meaning of today's word has pretty much been replaced by angel: "My bad genius tells me, 'Yes, go ahead. Do it!' but my good genius says, 'No, don't listen to him'."
Word History: Today's Good Word started out in Old English meaning "moral spirit", copied letter-for-letter from Latin genius "guardian spirit; wit, talent", originally "generative power". We know the original meaning for we know it came from Proto-Indo-European g'en-/g'on- "to bear, give birth to", a very productive PIE word that also produced reduplicated Sanskrit jajati "begets, bears", Greek gonos "birth, offspring" and gyne "woman", as in gynecology, Latin reduplicated and metathesized gignere "to bear, beget" and genus "race, breed, kind", Irish and Scots Gaelic gin "to bear, beget", Welsh geni "birth", Breton genel "bear, beget", Czech žena "woman", Russian zhena "woman, wife", Polish żona "wife", Ukrainian zhinka "woman", Armenian kin "woman", English kin and kind, German Kind "child", and Dutch kind "child". (Now for a standing e-ovation for Dr. Lewis Jury who since 2008 has contributed over 100 Good Words as fetching as today's.)
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