English Explanatory Dictionary

efficient

English dictionary entry

Meanings

adj
  1. Making good, thorough, or careful use of resources; not consuming extra. Especially, making good use of time or energy.
  2. Expressing the proportion of consumed energy that was successfully used in a process; the ratio of useful output to total input.
  3. Causing effects, producing results; bringing into being; initiating change (rare except in philosophical and legal expression efficient cause = causative factor or agent).
  4. effective, efficacious
noun
  1. A cause; something that causes an effect.

Pronunciation

/ɪˈfɪʃənt/ /əˈfɪʃənt/ en-us-efficient.ogg /ᵻˈfiʃɪəɳʈ/

Word forms

efficient more efficient most efficient efficients

Etymology

1398, “making,” from Old French, from Latin efficientem, nominative efficiēns, participle of efficere (“work out, accomplish”) (see effect). Meaning “productive, skilled” is from 1787. Efficiency apartment is first recorded 1930, American English.

Synonyms

economical efficacious efficient potent

Antonyms

inefficient prodigal uneconomical

Related words

effect effective effectiveness effectivity effector effectual effectuate efficacious efficacity efficacy efficiency subefficiency potency one fell swoop kill two birds with one stone skill skillful excellent

Derived words

cost-efficient ecoefficient efficient cause efficient frontier efficiently efficient market hypothesis efficientness energy-efficient energy efficient equiefficient hyperefficient Kaldor-Hicks efficient nonefficient subefficient superefficient tax-efficient ultraefficient Pareto efficient

Translations

Bulgarian: ефикасен Catalan: eficient Czech: účinný Dutch: efficiënt Finnish: hyötysuhde French: efficace Hungarian: gazdaságos Hungarian: hatékony Irish: éifeachtúil Italian: efficiente Polish: sprawny Portuguese: eficaz Romanian: but see randament Scottish Gaelic: èifeachdach Tagalog: episyente
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
Back to search All on E Russian dictionary Dahl dictionary