Definify.com
Webster 1913 Edition
Effete
Ef-fete′
,Adj.
No longer capable of producing young, as an animal, or fruit, as the earth; hence, worn out with age; exhausted of energy; incapable of efficient action; no longer productive; barren; sterile.
Effete
results from virile efforts. Mrs. Browning
If they find the old governments
– effete
, worn out, . . . they may seek new ones. Burke.
Efˊfi-ca′cious-ly
, adv.
Webster 1828 Edition
Effete
EFFE'TE
,Adj.
1.
Barren; not capable of producing young, as animal, or fruit, as the earth. An animal becomes effete by losing the power of conception. The earth may be rendered effete, by drouth, or by exhaustion of fertility.2.
Worn out with age; as effete sensuality.Definition 2024
effete
effete
English
Alternative forms
- effœte
Adjective
effete (comparative more effete, superlative most effete)
- (obsolete) Of substances, quantities etc: exhausted, spent, worn-out.
- 1621, Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, II.4.1.v:
- Nature is not effœte, as he saith, or so lavish, to bestow all her gifts upon an age, but hath reserved some for posterity, to shew her power, that she is still the same, and not old or consumed.
- 1621, Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, II.4.1.v:
- (now rare) Of people: lacking strength or vitality; feeble, powerless, impotent.
- 1929, George Macaulay Trevelyan, History of England: From 1485 to the End of the Reign of Queen Anne, 1714, page 457:
- Amid the effete monarchies and princedoms of feudal Europe, morally and materially exhausted by the Thirty Years' War, the only hope of resistance to France lay in the little Republic of merchants, Holland.
-
- Decadent, weak through self-indulgence.
- Effeminate.
- 1951, Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny, page 27:
- a good-humored, effete boy brought up by maiden aunts.
-
Derived terms
Translations
lacking strength
decadent
effeminate — see effeminate