A genre (pronounced /ˈʒɑːnrə/, also /ˈdʒɑːnrə/; from French, genre /ʒɑ̃ʀ/, "kind" or "sort", from Latin: genus (stem gener-), Greek: genos, γένος) is a loose set of criteria for a category of composition; the term is often used to categorize literature and speech, but is also used for any other form of art or utterance. Genres are vague categories with no fixed boundaries, they are formed by sets of conventions, and many works cross into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions. The scope of the word "genre" is sometimes confined to art and culture, particularly literature and music, but it has a long history in rhetoric as well. In genre studies the concept of genre is not compared to originality. Rather, all works are recognized as either reflecting on or participating in the conventions of genre.
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