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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

GEN'ERATE, v.t. [L. genero. See Gender.]
1. To beget; to procreate; to propagate; to produce a being similar to the parent. Every animal generates his own species.
2. To produce; to cause to be; to bring into life; as great whales which the waters generated.
3. To cause; to produce; to form.
Sounds are generated where there is no air at all.
Whatever generates a quantity of good chyle, must likewise generate milk.
In music, any given sound generates with itself its octave and two other sounds extremely sharp, viz, its twelfth above or the octave of its fifth, and the seventeenth above.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

v
1: bring into existence; "The new manager generated a lot of problems"; "The computer bug generated chaos in the office"; "The computer generated this image"; "The earthquake generated a tsunami" [syn: generate, bring forth]
2: give or supply; "The cow brings in 5 liters of milk"; "This year's crop yielded 1,000 bushels of corn"; "The estate renders some revenue for the family" [syn: render, yield, return, give, generate]
3: produce (energy); "We can't generate enough power for the entire city"; "The hydroelectric plant needs to generate more electricity"
4: make children; "Abraham begot Isaac"; "Men often father children but don't recognize them" [syn: beget, get, engender, father, mother, sire, generate, bring forth]

Merriam Webster's

transitive verb (-ated; -ating) Etymology: Latin generatus, past participle of generare, from gener-, genus descent, birth — more at kin Date: 1509 1. to bring into existence: as a. procreate, beget b. to originate by a vital, chemical, or physical process ; produce <generate electricity> 2. to be the cause of (a situation, action, or state of mind) <these stories…generate a good deal of psychological suspense — Atlantic> 3. to define or originate (as a mathematical or linguistic set or structure) by the application of one or more rules or operations; especially to trace out (as a curve) by a moving point or trace out (as a surface) by a moving curve

Oxford Reference Dictionary

v.tr. 1 bring into existence; produce, evolve. 2 produce (electricity). 3 Math. (of a point or line or surface conceived as moving) make (a line or surface or solid). 4 Math. & Linguistics produce (a set or sequence of items) by the formulation and application of precise criteria. Derivatives: generable adj. Etymology: L generare beget (as GENUS)

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Generate Gen"er*ate, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Generated; p. pr. & vb. n. Generating.] [L. generatus, p. p. of generare to generate, fr. genus. See Genus, Gender.] 1. To beget; to procreate; to propagate; to produce (a being similar to the parent); to engender; as, every animal generates its own species. 2. To cause to be; to bring into life. --Milton. 3. To originate, especially by a vital or chemical process; to produce; to cause. Whatever generates a quantity of good chyle must likewise generate milk. --Arbuthnot. 4. (Math.) To trace out, as a line, figure, or solid, by the motion of a point or a magnitude of inferior order.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(generates, generating, generated) Frequency: The word is one of the 3000 most common words in English. 1. To generate something means to cause it to begin and develop. The Employment Minister said the reforms would generate new jobs. ...the excitement generated by the changes in Eastern Europe. = create VERB: V n, V-ed 2. To generate a form of energy or power means to produce it. The company, New England Electric, burns coal to generate power. VERB: V n

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

v. a. 1. Beget, procreate, engender, breed, propagate. 2. Produce, form, make, beget, engender, breed, cause, bring about, bring into existence.

Moby Thesaurus

accomplish, achieve, amplify, author, bear, beget, breed, breed true, bring about, bring forth, bring into being, bring to effect, bring to pass, call into being, cause, charge, coin, conceive, concoct, construct, contrive, cook up, copulate, create, crossbreed, design, develop, devise, discover, do, dream up, effect, effectuate, electrify, energize, engender, establish, evolve, fabricate, fashion, father, forge, form, found, frame, galvanize, gestate, get, get up, give being to, give birth to, give occasion to, give origin to, give rise to, hatch, impose, improvise, inaugurate, inbreed, induce, initiate, inspire, institute, introduce, invent, loop in, make, make do with, make love, make up, manufacture, mature, mint, mother, mould, multiply, muster up, occasion, originate, outbreed, parent, perform, plan, plug in, procreate, produce, proliferate, propagate, provoke, put together, realize, reproduce, reproduce in kind, set afloat, set on foot, set up, shock, short, short-circuit, sire, spawn, step down, step up, stiffen, strike out, switch off, switch on, think out, think up, turn off, turn on, whip up, work, work up