Catholic Dictionary
Find accurate definitions of over 5,000 Catholic terms and phrases (including abbreviations). Based on Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.
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GENUS
The qualities that are common to several species, abstracting from their distinctive differences. Thus a universal concept, like intelligent being, can be applied to angels and men. The supreme genera are called categories, or which the first (in Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas) expresses substance, and the nine others express accidental properties, namely quantity, quality, relation, place, time, action, passion, position, and state. (Etym. Latin genus, class, kind.)
