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Effete vs Barren - What's the difference?

effete | barren |

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)
  • (label) Of substances, quantities etc: exhausted, spent, worn-out.
  • *, 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.
  • 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

    barren

    English

    Adjective

    (en-adj)
  • (label) Unable to bear children; sterile.
  • 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 ?
  • Of poor fertility, infertile; not producing vegetation.
  • * (1800–1859)
  • barren mountain tracts
  • * '>citation
  • Bleak.
  • *{{quote-book, year=1922, author=(Michael Arlen), title= “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days, chapter=Ep./4/2
  • , 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)
  • brilliant but barren reveries
  • * (Jonathan Swift) (1667–1745)
  • Some schemes will appear barren of hints and matter.
  • * {{quote-news, year=2011, date=September 2, author=Phil McNulty, work=BBC
  • , title= 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.}}
  • Mentally dull; stupid.
  • * (William Shakespeare), (Hamlet), III.ii. ca. 1602
  • Set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too.

    Synonyms

    * sterile

    Antonyms

    * fertile * fruitful

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • An area of low fertility and habitation, a desolate place.
  • The pine barrens are a site lonely enough to suit any hermit.