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Efficient vs Expedient - What's the difference?

efficient | expedient |

As adjectives the difference between efficient and expedient

is that efficient is making good, thorough, or careful use of resources; not consuming extra. Especially, making good use of time or energy while expedient is simple, easy, or quick; convenient.

As a noun expedient is

a method or means for achieving a particular result, especially when direct or efficient; a resource.

efficient

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Making good, thorough, or careful use of resources; not consuming extra. Especially, making good use of time or energy.
  • * {{quote-magazine, title=A better waterworks, date=2013-06-01, volume=407, issue=8838
    • , page=5 (Technology Quarterly), magazine=(The Economist) citation , passage=An artificial kidney these days still means a refrigerator-sized dialysis machine. Such devices mimic
  • Using a particular proportion of available energy.
  • Causing effects; producing results.
  • * Wilson
    • The efficient cause is the working cause.

    Antonyms

    * inefficient

    Derived terms

    * efficient cause * subefficient

    Related terms

    * effect * effective * effectiveness * effectivity * effector * effectual * effectuate * efficacious * efficacity * efficacy * efficiency * subefficiency

    References

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    expedient

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Simple, easy, or quick; convenient.
    • Most people, faced with a decision, will choose the most expedient option.
  • * Bible, John xvi. 7
    • It is expedient for you that I go away.
  • * Whately
    • Nothing but the right can ever be expedient , since that can never be true expediency which would sacrifice a greater good to a less.
  • Governed by self-interest, often short-term self-interest.
  • * 1861 , John Stuart Mill,
    • But the Expedient', in the sense in which it is opposed to the Right, generally means that which is ' expedient for the particular interest of the agent himself; as when a minister sacrifices the interests of his country to keep himself in place.
  • (obsolete) Quick; rapid; expeditious.
  • * Shakespeare
    • His marches are expedient to this town.

    Related terms

    * expede * expedience * expediency * expedite * expedition

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A method or means for achieving a particular result, especially when direct or efficient; a resource.
  • * 1906 , O. Henry, :
    • He would never let her know that he was aware of the strange expedient to which she had been driven by her great distress.
  • * 2009 , (Diarmaid MacCulloch), A History of Christianity , Penguin 2010, page 709:
    • Depressingly, [...] the expedient of importing African slaves was in part meant to protect the native American population from exploitation.

    External links

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