GENERATION is also used, though somewhat improperly, for genealogy, or the series of children issued from the same stock. Thus the gospel of St Matthew commences with the book of the generation of Jesus Christ,
Generation II Genesis Christ, &c. The latter and more accurate translators, instead of generation use the word genealogy.
GENERATION is also used to signify a people, race, or nation, especially in the literal translations of the Scripture, where the word generally occurs wherever the Latin has generatio, and the Greek γένεσις. Thus, "A wicked and perverse generation seeketh a sign," &c. "One generation passeth away, and another cometh," &c.
GENERATION is also used in the sense of an age, or the ordinary period of man's life. Thus we say, "to the third and fourth generation." In this sense historians usually reckon a generation the space of 33 years or thereabouts. See AGE.
Herodotus makes three generations in a hundred years; which computation appears from the latter authors of political arithmetic to be pretty just.