Generational describes something that relates to a specific generation or is passed down through generations of a family.

When people talk about generational differences, they mean how people born in different time periods think or act differently. Your grandparents grew up without computers or cell phones, your parents probably got their first phone as teenagers, and you've had technology around you your whole life. These differences in experience can create generational gaps in how people see the world.

The word also describes things that last across multiple generations of a family. A generational family business might be run by a grandmother, then her daughter, then her granddaughter. Generational wealth means money and property passed from parents to children to grandchildren. Some families have generational traditions, like always gathering at the same lake cabin every summer, or generational recipes that great-grandma first cooked a hundred years ago.

Sometimes people describe exceptionally talented athletes or artists as generational talents, meaning someone so extraordinary that a person like them only comes along once in a generation. When people call a basketball player a generational talent, they mean you might wait twenty or thirty years to see another player that skilled.