Meaning

noun a general kind of something

noun (biology) taxonomic group containing one or more species

originEtymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ǵenh₁- Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Indo-European *ǵénh₁os Proto-Italic *genos Latin genusbor. English genus Borrowed from Latin genus (“birth, origin, a race, sort, kind”) from the root gen- in Latin gignō (“to beget, produce”). Doublet of gender and genre, further related to kin.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0