Effete vs Barren - What's the difference?
effete | barren |
(label) Of substances, quantities etc: exhausted, spent, worn-out.
*, II.4.1.v:
Of people: lacking strength or vitality; feeble, powerless, impotent.
*
Decadent, weak through self-indulgence.
Effeminate.
*
(label) Unable to bear children; sterile.
Of poor fertility, infertile; not producing vegetation.
* (1800–1859)
* '>citation
Bleak.
*{{quote-book, year=1922, author=(Michael Arlen), title=
, passage=As they turned into Hertford Street they startled a robin from the poet's head on a barren fountain, and he fled away with a cameo note.}}
Unproductive; fruitless; unprofitable; empty.
* (1796-1859)
* (Jonathan Swift) (1667–1745)
* {{quote-news, year=2011, date=September 2, author=Phil McNulty, work=BBC
, title= Mentally dull; stupid.
* (William Shakespeare), (Hamlet), III.ii. ca. 1602
An area of low fertility and habitation, a desolate place.
As an adjective effete
is (label) of substances, quantities etc: exhausted, spent, worn-out.As a noun barren is
bar.effete
English
Alternative forms
*Adjective
(en adjective)- 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.
- 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.
- a good-humored, effete boy brought up by maiden aunts.
Derived terms
* effetely * effetenessbarren
English
Adjective
(en-adj)- I silently wept as my daughter's husband rejected her. What would she do now that she was no longer a maiden but also barren ?
- barren mountain tracts
“Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days, chapter=Ep./4/2
- brilliant but barren reveries
- Some schemes will appear barren of hints and matter.
Bulgaria 0-3 England, passage=Rooney had been suffered a barren spell for England with only one goal in 15 games but he was in no mood to ignore the gifts on offer in front of an increasingly subdued Bulgarian support.}}
- Set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too.
Synonyms
* sterileAntonyms
* fertile * fruitfulNoun
(en noun)- The pine barrens are a site lonely enough to suit any hermit.