Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Capable of producing offspring or vegetation; fruitful.
- adj. Marked by intellectual productivity. See Synonyms at fertile.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Prolific; readily producing offspring; hence, fruitful or productive in a general sense: as, the fecund earth.
Wiktionary
- adj. formal Highly fertile; able to produce offspring.
- adj. figuratively Leading to new ideas or innovation.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Fruitful in children; prolific.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. capable of producing offspring or vegetation
- adj. intellectually productive
Etymologies
- From Latin fecundus ("fertile"), which is related to fētus and fēmina ("woman"). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Old French fecond, from Latin fēcundus; see dhē(i)- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“When those selected Tweets can then be cross-referenced with other sets of data from outside Twitter - that's when the word fecund starts feeling inadequate.”
“-- Kevin Federline can't be "fecund" unless women are always impregnating him.”
“Its unbelievable- monster houseplants towered over me and 'fecund' is really the best word to use in describing the rain forest.”
“PS: I always wanted to use the word "fecund" and one of its meaning was this "the capacity of abundant production".”
“Oh, I also learned the word "fecund" from one of his lyrics.”
“This fecund branch effectively includes two major limbs.”
“And the writing, at its best, is wonderfully allusive – a golden cloud of summer pollen is as fecund and generative as the wind Plato thought could impregnate horses – and precise, often finding all manner of surprising likenesses: dragonflies "the size of kitchen matches" cruise the air; cut grass is baled in blue plastic "the exact colour of surgical scrubs".”
The Guardian: To the River: A Journey Beneath the Surface by Olivia Laing – review
“The tallest mountain in all of Mexico is Mount Orizaba in Veracruz State and the most desolate sea level oill exploitative PEMEX hell hole is there as well and the state is not simply swamplands and snow covered volcanoes and fecund valleys growing everything from coffee to sugar cane and pineapples but a place of extraordinary beauty.”
“Scotland has a comparatively large number of originally native but now extinct large mammal species, as well as large areas of woodland and fecund deer population, prompting the advocacy of reintroductions of species such as the Eurasian lynx to the Scottish highlands.”
“The world is great, the world is fecund, but the world is finite.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘fecund’.
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GRE 2014
abate, abdicate, abase, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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Iaan
dirigisme, dystopia, cacotopia, ex ante, veritable, indefatigable, curmudgeon, desultory, antediluvian, transmogrify, pendent, elongate and 269 more...
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Familiar
Just a list of words
fulminate, unctuous, malediction, lumpenproletariat, descry, surfeit, sententious, supernumerary, unabashed, picayune, obliterate, decry and 109 more...
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501
Classic
mete, ire, bane, bilk, boor, elan, ado, toil, onus, aberration, abstruse, anomaly and 401 more...
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501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
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SAT Words
But only the ones that I don't already know.
abase, abash, abominate, abstruse, acclivity, accolade, accost, adroit, adulate, adulterate, adumbrate, affray and 241 more...
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501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
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Naresh_Gre2
convoke, cosset, coterie, declaim, distaff, doff, dovetail, droll, dyspeptic, egress, ersatz, euphemism and 108 more...
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501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
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Ballardian
All things descriptive from JG
Ballardoperation mindfuck, pataphysics, wahrheitssensible..., polymorphism, postprandial, covalent, stygian, lucus a non lucendo, kafkaesque, leitmotif, fugacious, ablate and 77 more...
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New Words
Words I want to add to my working vocabulary.
picayune, elision, intimated, modicum, non sequitur, insouciant, vituperate, asperity, perfidious, gainsay, fulmination, inimical and 11 more...
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New Words
idiopathic, quidditas, cloacal, peregrination, cyclamen, expatiate, pedantic, salonniere, manque, pelagic, exogenous, pellucid and 83 more...
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man gre
abase, abeyance, abreast, abscission, abscond, abyss, accede, accretion, acerbic, acidulous, acumen, adulterate and 483 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1834 more...
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GRE Reference
A list of words unfamiliar to me that I have repeatedly encountered in GRE question sets.
parochial, clique, salacious, aegis, ostracize, conceited, sacrilegious, inane, serendipity, gourmand, polemic, tenuous and 138 more...
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SAT Words
But only the ones that I don't already know.
abase, abash, abominate, abstruse, acclivity, accolade, accost, adroit, adulate, adulterate, adumbrate, affray and 241 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for fecund.
pikachu And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the fecund and mysterious seemed to look at her, pensive, as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul.
-Heart of Darkness (Conrad) Mar 19, 2011