In certain systems for object-oriented programming such as the Common Lisp Object System and Dylan, a generic function is an entity made up of all methods having the same name.
Generic functions correspond roughly to what Smalltalk calls methods; but when a generic function is called, method dispatch occurs on the basis of all arguments, not just a single privileged one. See multiple dispatch for more.
Another, completely separate definition of generic function is a function that uses parametric polymorphism. This is the definition used when working with a language like OCaml. An example of a generic function is
id: a->a let id a = a
which takes an argument of any type and returns something of that same type.
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