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say it: JEN-ur-uhl
general is an adjective, noun and verb meaning "applying to all or most members of a category or group". It carries 10 recorded senses.
not specialized or limited to one class of things
“general studies”
“general knowledge”
somewhat indefinite
“bearing a general resemblance to the original”
“a general description of the merchandise”
of worldwide scope or applicability
“an issue of cosmopolitan import”
“the shrewdest political and ecumenical comment of our time”
“universal experience”
the head of a religious order or congregation
a fact about the whole (as opposed to particular)
“he discussed the general but neglected the particular”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for general come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.