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  1. effete love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. adj. Depleted of vitality, force, or effectiveness; exhausted: the final, effete period of the baroque style.
  2. adj. Marked by self-indulgence, triviality, or decadence: an effete group of self-professed intellectuals.
  3. adj. Overrefined; effeminate.
  4. adj. No longer productive; infertile.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. Past bearing; functionless, as a result of age or exhaustion.
  2. Hence Having the energies worn out or exhausted; become incapable of efficient action; barren of results.
  3. Synonyms Unproductive, unfruitful, unprolific.
  4. Spent, worn out.
  5. An obsolete spelling of effete.

Wiktionary

  1. adj. obsolete Of substances, quantities etc: exhausted, spent, worn-out.
  2. adj. Of people: lacking strength or vitality; feeble, powerless, impotent.
  3. adj. Decadent, self-indulgent.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. adj. No longer capable of producing young, as an animal, or fruit, as the earth; hence, worn out with age; exhausted of energy; incapable of efficient action; no longer productive; barren; sterile.

WordNet 3.0

  1. adj. marked by excessive self-indulgence and moral decay

Etymologies

  1. From Latin effetus ("that has given birth; exhausted"). (Wiktionary)
  2. Latin effētus, worn out, exhausted : ex-, ex- + fētus, bearing young, pregnant; see dhē(i)- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

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Lists

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Comments

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  • kingparton As we find stumps of vast trees in our exhausted soils, and have received traditions of their ancient fertility to tillage, so history reckons epochs in which the intellect of famed races becomes effete.

    Ralph Waldo Emerson, English Traits Jul 25, 2011

  • seanahan Always reminds me of effeminate. Oct 21, 2007

  • skipvia See effete liberals. Oct 21, 2007

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‘effete’ has been looked up 4623 times, loved by 17 people, added to 133 lists, commented on 3 times, and has a Scrabble score of 12.