progeny

From Middle English progenie, from Old French progenie, from Latin prōgeniēs, from prōgignō (“beget”).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈpɹɒd͡ʒəni/
• (General American) enPR: prŏj'ə-nē, IPA^(key): /ˈpɹɑd͡ʒəni/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: prog‧e‧ny

progeny (countable and uncountable, plural progenies)

1. (uncountable) Offspring or descendants considered as a group.

   I treasure this five-generation photograph of my great-great grandmother and her progeny.

   • 1859, Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species:

     I should premise that I use the term Struggle for Existence in a large and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny.

   • 2020, Brandon Taylor, Real Life, Daunt Books Originals, page 88:

     One worm on a single plate can give rise to thousands of progeny after just a week or so.

2. (uncountable, obsolete) Descent, lineage, ancestry.
   • 1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene iii], page 109, column 1:

     Beſides, all French and France exclaimes on thee, / Doubting thy Birth and lawfull Progenie. / Who ioyn’ſt thou with, but with a Lordly Nation, / That will not truſt thee, but for profits ſake ?

3. (countable, figurative) A result of a creative effort.

   His dissertation is his most important intellectual progeny to date.

• (offspring): binary clone, descendant(s), fruit of one's loins, get, issue, lineage, offspring

• progenitive, progenitor

• pyrogen