Faith & RitualGreek → English
Genesis
/ˈdʒɛnəsɪs/noun
The origin or beginning of something, and the title of the first book of the Bible.
The Greek roots
γένεσις
génesis
origin, coming to be
γίγνεσθαι
gígnesthai
to become, be born
Literally: “a coming into being”
The story of the word
The Hebrew name of the book is Bereshit, its opening words, in the beginning. Genesis is the title the Septuagint translators gave it in Alexandria, taken from the phrase that keeps returning through the text: these are the generations of. English inherited the book title through Latin and only later used genesis for origins in general.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- Old English
Same family
genegeneticshydrogencosmogony
In a sentence
The genesis of the whole project was a complaint scribbled on a napkin.