Efficient definitions and example sentences on Wordnik

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Definitions (15)

American Heritage Dictionary (3)

adjective Acting directly to produce an effect: an efficient cause. See Synonyms at effective.
adjective Acting or producing effectively with a minimum of waste, expense, or unnecessary effort.
adjective Exhibiting a high ratio of output to input.

Century Dictionary (8)

Producing outward effects; of a nature to produce a result; active; causative. If one flower is fertilised with pollen which is more efficient than that applied to the other flowers on the same peduncle, the latter often drop off. Darwin, Cross and Self Fertilisation, p. 399.
Acting or able to act with due effect; adequate in performance; bringing to bear the requisite knowledge, skill, and industry; capable; competent: as, an efficient workman, director, or commander. Every healthy and efficient mind passes a large part of life in the company most easy to him. Emerson, Clubs.
Efficient cause a cause which brings about something external to itself: distinguished from material and formal cause by being external to that which it causes, and from the end or final cause in being that by which something is made or done, and not merely that for the sake of which it is made or done. The conception of efficient cause antedates that of physical force in the scientific sense; and the latter finds no place in the Aristotelian division of causes. But many writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries extend the meaning of efficient cause to include forces. Other and inferior writers, since the Aristotelian philosophy has ceased to form an essential part of a liberal education, use the phrase efficient cause in imitation of older writers, but without any distinct apprehension of its meaning, probably in the sense of effectual cause. (See the citation from Lecky, below.) Efficient causes are traditionally divided into various classes: 1st, into active and emanative: thus, fire is said to be the emanative cause of its own heat and the active cause of heat in other bodies; 2d, into immanent and transient: an immanent cause brings about some modification of itself (it is, nevertheless, regarded as external, because it does not produce itself); 3d, into free and necessary; 4th, into cause by itself and cause by accident: thus, if a man in digging a well finds a treasure, he is the cause per se of the well being dug, and the cause by accident of the discovery of the treasure; 5th, into absolute and adjuvant, the latter being again divided into principal and secondary, and secondary into procatarctical, proegumenal, and instrumental (the procatarctical extrinsically excites the principal cause to action, the proegumenal internally disposes the principal cause to action); 6th, into first and second; 7th, into universal and particular; 8th, into proximate and remote. Medical men follow Galen in dividing the efficient causes of disease into predisposing, exciting, and determining. Every politician knew that the interference of the sovereign during the debate in the House of Lords was the efficient cause of the change of ministry. Lecky, Eng. in 18th Cent., xv.

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COLUMN: You say 'shortcut,' and I say 'efficient' -- and so does Isa
These innovative strategies are not only making whole transcriptome analysis feasible and cost-efficient, they are also creating new commercial opportunities, including the analysis of newly discovered populations of small RNAs believed to have an important role in gene regulation, protein expression, and cell function. — GEN News Highlights
As computing hardware becomes smaller and more power-efficient, the mobile version of OS X will become a bigger part of Apple's product road map. — iPod Product Center
Now is the time to save billions by making 2 million homes and 75 percent of federal buildings more energy-efficient, and to double our capacity to generate alternative sources of energy within three years. — Soccer Dad
Which is the most fuel-efficient, which is the most comfortable and refined? — Examiner California Headlines

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