核心畫面
Picture a label written at the level of the whole shelf rather than the single box: 'painkiller' instead of 'Panadol', 'dog' instead of 'Lucky'. A generic label is aimed at the kind, so it fits every member and picks out none of them. That wide aim can be held as the picture inside the word — and it also explains the faint flatness the word can carry. When someone calls a song or an email generic, they mean it could belong to anyone in the group; nothing in it points to this one.
可以想成一個貼在「整層架子」而不是「單一個盒子」上的標籤：寫「止痛藥」而不是「普拿疼」，寫「狗」而不是「Lucky」…更多收起
可以想成一個貼在「整層架子」而不是「單一個盒子」上的標籤：寫「止痛藥」而不是「普拿疼」，寫「狗」而不是「Lucky」。generic 的標籤瞄準的是整個種類，所以每一個成員都套得上，卻誰也沒指到。這個「瞄得很寬」的動作可以拿來當作它的畫面，同時也解釋了這個字有時帶著的那點平淡：說一首歌、一封信很 generic，意思是它放在誰身上都成立，裡面沒有東西指向這一個。原始詞典資料13 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
genericadj/dʒɪˈnɛɹ.ɪk/
- 1
Very broad; pertaining or appropriate to large classes or groups as opposed to specific instances.
- Capri pants can be a generic term for any cropped slim pants.
- […] the essence is that such self-describing poets describe what is in them, but not peculiar to them, – what is generic, not what is special and individual.
- 2
Lacking in precision, often in an evasive fashion; vague; imprecise.
- Having in mind Marx's conception of reason as a practical organ of collective existence, and of the object as something defined though not objectivized by reason, we may describe his epistemology as one of generic subjectivism.
- 3
medicinepharmacologysciencesOf a product or drug, not having a brand name; nonproprietary in design or contents; fungible with the rest of its class.
- The four-and-one-half-day trial was centered on acts that neither she nor prosecutors dispute: On July 13, 2012, she drove her Lexus S.U.V. erratically after swallowing Zolpidem, a generic form of the sleep medication Ambien.
- 4
biologynatural-sciencestaxonomyPertaining to genera of life instead of particular species thereof.
- Holonym: familial
- Meronyms: infrasubspecific, infraspecific, subspecific, specific
- 5
grammarhuman-scienceslinguisticsSpecifying neither masculine nor feminine; epicene; unisex.
- Words like salesperson and firefighter are generic.
- This included criticism of the generic use of man to include men and women.
- 6
computingengineeringmathematicsOf a procedure, written so as to operate on any data type, the type required being passed as a parameter.
- 7
geometrymathematicssciencesOf a point, having coordinates that are algebraically independent over the base field.
- 8
Relating to genre.
- Both [films] test formal and generic boundaries.
另外 1 個記錄的用法
- 9
Having no distinguishing characteristics; unoriginal.
- That movie was so generic; it was such a bore!
genericnoun/dʒɪˈnɛɹ.ɪk/
- 1
A product sold under a generic name.
- 2
A wine that is a combination of several wines, or made from a combination of several grape varieties.
- 3
grammarhuman-scienceslinguisticsA term that specifies neither male nor female.
- […]a male-centered perspective[…]has resulted in false generics in everyday life[…]
- 4
The part of a toponym that identifies the feature's type.
- Where the generic of an English-language place name has been translated into French, it is essential to restore it to its original English form when translating the French document into English.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。