genial

What it means

1. Friendly and cheerful; enlivening.

   a genial glow

   5 more examples

   Such a face was calculated to awaken not only the calm sentiment of esteem, the distant one of admiration, but some feeling more tender, genial, intimate—friendship, perhaps, affection, interest.

   1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], “(please specify the page)”, in Shirley. A Tale. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC

   This genial girl, like her brother, was in the grand situation of having no home and of carrying on life, such a splendid kind of life, by successive visits to relations; […].

   1913, Henry James, A Small Boy and Others

   There had been the shine of candles, and the laughter of the women, the old Judge's genial humor.

   1920, Temple Bailey, The Trumpeter Swan

   George Relph plays the part of the Vicar of the Parish, a railway enthusiast, who becomes amateur engine driver, with Sir Godfrey Tearle (the Bishop) as his fireman, while Stanley Holloway is the genial toper who provides the cash to buy the line.

   1953 March, Baynham Honri, “Filming "The Titfield Thunderbolt"”, in Railway Magazine, page 164

   [Abdullah] Shami, a genial and open-faced man of forty-five, greeted me warmly.

   2001 July 9, Jeffrey Goldberg, “Letter From Gaza: The Martyr Strategy”, in The Atlantic

2. especiallyclimatologyPleasantly mild and warm.

   genial warmth

   1 more example

   We met other families on the Long Walk, enjoying like ourselves the return of the genial season.

   1826, [Mary Shelley], The Last Man. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC

3. uncommonMarked by genius.

   Men of genius have so often attacht the highest value to their less genial works.

   1826, Julius Hare, Guesses at Truth by Two Brothers

   1 more example

   About fifty years later, in 1675, the Danish astronomer Ole Roemer (1644-1710) had the genial idea of using astronomical rather than terrestrial distances.

   2003, Laura Fermi, Gilberto Bernardini, Galileo and the Scientific Revolution, Courier Dover Publications, page 111

In a sentence

a genial glow

Where it comes from

1. Middle Frenchgénial
2. Middle Frenchgénial
3. Englishgenial

Borrowed from Middle French génial, borrowed from Latin geniālis (“of or pertaining to marriage; festive”), from genius (“guardian spirit”) + -ālis.