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Dormant vs Effete - What's the difference?

dormant | effete |

As adjectives the difference between dormant and effete

is that dormant is inactive, sleeping, asleep, suspended while effete is of substances, quantities etc: exhausted, spent, worn-out.

dormant

English

Alternative forms

* dormaunt (obsolete)

Adjective

(-)
  • Inactive, sleeping, asleep, suspended.
  • Grass goes dormant during the winter, waiting for spring before it grows again.
    The bank account was dormant ; there had been no transactions in months.
    This volcano is dormant but not extinct.
  • * Burke
  • It is by lying dormant a long time, or being very rarely exercised, that arbitrary power steals upon a people.
  • (heraldry) In a sleeping posture; distinguished from couchant.
  • a lion dormant

    Antonyms

    * active * active, extinct

    Anagrams

    * ----

    effete

    English

    Alternative forms

    *

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (label) Of substances, quantities etc: exhausted, spent, worn-out.
  • *, II.4.1.v:
  • Nature is not effÅ“te , 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.
  • Of people: lacking strength or vitality; feeble, powerless, impotent.
  • *
  • 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.
  • *
  • a good-humored, effete boy brought up by maiden aunts.

    Derived terms

    * effetely * effeteness