Home UK English genie

Meaning of genie in English:

genie

Pronunciation /ˈdʒiːni/

Translate genie into Spanish

nounplural noun genies, plural noun genii/ˈdʒiːnɪʌɪ/

  • A spirit of Arabian folklore, frequently depicted as being imprisoned within a bottle or oil lamp and as being capable of granting wishes when summoned.

    Compare with jinn

    ‘If you had your choice, if you could pull a genie out of a bottle and the genie could grant you three wishes, what would your three wishes be?’
    • ‘Proper genies only grant wishes when they want to.’
    • ‘Supernatural creatures such as angels, genies, ghosts, and spirits, are believed to exist.’
    • ‘His second wish was to have piles of gold, and the genie granted it.’
    • ‘His friend summoned the genie, and made a wish that all of the forty thieves would be sent to a land far away.’
    • ‘All manner of unsavoury genies have been released from bottles in which they slumbered quite safely; they are not easily returned.’
    • ‘The breathtaking effects - genies in bottles, magic carpets - are by the stage illusionist responsible for the famous scene in the musical The Witches Of Eastwick.’
    • ‘Images of genies and bottles, clocks turned back, trains leaving stations, and the like tend to pepper our discourse and justify our passivity in the face of a historical force majeure.’
    • ‘They recognized that getting the nuclear genie back in the bottle was nigh impossible.’
    • ‘He wanted me to help him summon the genie for whatever evil plot he had planned.’
    • ‘It was true that a person chosen to receive the help of a genie got three wishes.’
    • ‘With the genie out of the bottle, it was only a matter of time before something more horrid would emerge.’
    • ‘Let's get a genie and wish that we could be young again and all of those things could be true.’
    • ‘Can she melt her tyrant husband's cold heart with her tales of treasures, monsters, genies, magic and romance and create a true story of her own?’
    • ‘Once again, we see that you cannot put the genie back in the bottle once it is out.’
    • ‘Be careful what you unleash: some genies can never be put back in their bottles.’
    • ‘Contrary to what you might think, genies have quite a bit of control over what wishes get granted.’
    • ‘She didn't care if he was a genie that could make her dearest wishes come true.’
    • ‘The genie is out of the bottle and now we must learn to live with it.’
    • ‘He spies a bottle that looks like it could hold a genie, so he rubs it.’

Phrases

    let the genie out of the bottle

    • Used in reference to doing or allowing something which leads to consequences that cannot be undone.

      ‘once you let the Open Source genie out of the bottle, it will be impossible to get it back in’
      • ‘the facial recognition genie is out of the bottle and is very unlikely to be stuffed back in’

      Origin

      From stories associated with the Arabian Nights: in one, Aladdin summons two genies by rubbing a ring and an old lamp; in another, a fisherman finds an old jar or bottle and accidentally releases a malevolent genie, which he eventually manages to trick into returning to the jar.

Origin

Mid 17th century (denoting a guardian or protective spirit): from French génie, from Latin genius (see genius). Génie was adopted in the current sense by the 18th-century French translators of The Arabian Nights' Entertainments, because of its resemblance in form and sense to Arabic jinnī jinn.