- 1 giving or willing to give freely; given freely a generous benefactor generous (with something) to be generous with your time to be generous in giving help a generous gift/offer It was generous of him to offer to pay for us both. opposite mean Oxford Collocations Dictionary verbsappear, be, feel, … adverbextremely, fairly, very, … prepositionof, to, with, … See full entry
- 2 more than is necessary; large synonym lavish a generous helping of meat The car has a generous amount of space. Oxford Collocations Dictionary verbsappear, be, feel, … adverbextremely, fairly, very, … prepositionof, to, with, … See full entry
- 3 kind in the way you treat people; willing to see what is good about somebody/something a generous mind He wrote a very generous assessment of my work. Oxford Collocations Dictionary verbsappear, be, feel, … adverbextremely, fairly, very, … prepositionof, to, with, … See full entry Word Originlate 16th cent.: via Old French from Latin generosus ‘noble, magnanimous’, from genus, gener- ‘stock, race’. The original sense was ‘of noble birth’, hence ‘characteristic of noble birth, courageous, magnanimous, not mean’ (a sense already present in Latin).Extra examples John’s getting very generous with the wine! She’s quite generous with her praise. Thank you for your donation. It was very generous of you. The review panel criticized the payments as overly generous. They have been extremely generous to the church. You have been most generous. He took a generous helping of pasta. He’s a kind and generous man. Her generous spirit shone through in everything she did. It was very generous of her to offer to pay. That’s a very generous offer. The director thanked the chairman for his generous gift. The gallery was named after its most generous benefactor. They were very generous with their time.
Check pronunciation: generous
