Other forms: generals
General means involving most people or things rather than a few. General knowledge, a general rule, in general.
It covers the whole rather than the particular: a general election, general practice, the general public. In general is the fixed phrase for speaking broadly. As a noun, a general is a senior army officer, and the title comes from captain general, meaning the captain over all the others. Note generally, generalise; and general practitioner, the British family doctor.
1adjectivegeneralInvolving most people or things rather than a few.~10%
“The general feeling in the office is that the new boss is fair.”
2nounseniorA senior army officer.~90%
“The general ordered his troops to retreat.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 10 sentences found in the wild and placed 10 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
general is a quality of breadth, or a rank.
Latin generalis comes from genus, a class or kind. Genus, generic and gender come from the same kind, and the military rank is a shortening of captain general.
Proto-Indo-European
*ǵenh₁-
Middle English
general
English, today
general
Built from
From Middle English general. From Middle English general, in turn from Anglo-Norman general, generall, Middle French general, and their source, Latin generālis, from genus (“class, kind”) + -ālis (“-al”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA