Adjective

(en adjective)

Incapable of producing results; useless; not successful; not worth attempting.

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, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=4 , passage=No matter how early I came down, I would find him on the veranda, smoking cigarettes, or

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*:There is an hour or two, after the passengers have embarked, which is disquieting and fussy.Stewards, carrying cabin trunks, swarm in the corridors. Passengers wander restlessly about or hurry, with futile energy, from place to place.

*{{quote-news, year=2011, date=December 15, author=Marc Higginson, work=BBC Sport

, title= Shamrock Rovers 0-4 Tottenham , passage=Goals from Steven Pienaar, Andros Townsend, Jermain Defoe and Harry Kane sealed the win, but Rubin Kazan's 1-1 draw against PAOK Salonika rendered Spurs' efforts futile .}}

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.

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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.

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a good-humored, effete boy brought up by maiden aunts.