Real and not fake; honest and sincere in what something is or how someone feels.
From Latin *genuinus* meaning “innate, authentic, natural,” possibly related to *gignere* “to beget, produce.” It originally contrasted things that were truly what they claimed to be with imitations. The emotional sense — sincere, not pretending — developed later.
We use ‘genuine’ both for objects and emotions, as if fake feelings and fake diamonds were the same kind of problem. The hunger for ‘genuine’ things shows how much people fear being tricked — by products, by advertising, even by each other.
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