genuine

authentic, genuine

1. Fowler (1926) tried to establish a distinction in meaning between these two words, reserving authentic for the truthfulness of (for example) a book's contents or a picture's subject and genuine for the status of its alleged creator. In the sentence The Holbein Henry VIII is both authentic and genuine, the implication is that the portrait really is of Henry VIII (and therefore authentic) and is really by Holbein (and therefore genuine). This distinction is difficult to maintain in practice, and items such as documents, antique furniture, signatures, and many others are regularly described as authentic or genuine without any identifiable distinction in meaning.

2. An especially important domain in which authentic has been used in recent years is that of ‘early’ music (i.e. before about 1700), where authentic instruments are those made and played according to the principles of the period in which the music was written; and so a violin (for example) can be an authentic baroque one, although it may be of modern manufacture and therefore not genuine or original. An increasingly common alternative is period instruments, first recorded in the 1920s but not widely used until the 1970s.

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genuine

is pronounced jen-yuh-in in BrE. In AmE the pronunciation jen-yuh-iyn is widespread (sometimes for humorous effect) but non-standard.