genial

adj

1. Friendly and cheerful; enlivening.

   “a genial glow”

   “Such a face was calculated to awaken not only the calm sentiment of esteem, the distant one of admiration, but some feeling more tender, genial, intimate—friendship, perhaps, affection, interest.”

   “This genial girl, like her brother, was in the grand situation of having no home and of carrying on life, such a splendid kind of life, by successive visits to relations; […].”

   “There had been the shine of candles, and the laughter of the women, the old Judge's genial humor.”

   “George Relph plays the part of the Vicar of the Parish, a railway enthusiast, who becomes amateur engine driver, with Sir Godfrey Tearle (the Bishop) as his fireman, while Stanley Holloway is the genial toper who provides the cash to buy the line.”

2. (especially)Pleasantly mild and warm.

   “genial warmth”

   “We met other families on the Long Walk, enjoying like ourselves the return of the genial season.”

3. (uncommon)Marked by genius.

   “Men of genius have so often attacht the highest value to their less genial works.”

   “About fifty years later, in 1675, the Danish astronomer Ole Roemer (1644-1710) had the genial idea of using astronomical rather than terrestrial distances.”

4. (archaic)Pertaining to marriage; nuptial.

   “the genial bed”

5. (archaic, broadly)Contributing to, or concerned in, propagation or production; generative; procreative; productive.

   “Creator Venus, genial power of love.”

   “The well breath'd youth, hot-mettled, and flush with genial juices, was now fairly in for making me know my driver.”

   “In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were shut up; and yet there was a genial shadowing forth of all these dinners and the progress of their cooking, in the thawed blotch of wet above each baker's oven; where the pavement smoked as if its stones were cooking too.”

   “The all-generating powers and genial heat / Of Nature, when she strikes thro’ the thick blood / Of cattle, […]”

6. (obsolete, uncommon)Belonging to one's genius or natural character; native; natural; inborn.

   “natural incapacity and genial indisposition”

7. (Roman, uncommon)Relating to or resembling a genius (Roman tutelary deity).
8. (not-comparable)Relating to the chin; genian.