efficient
Making good, thorough, or careful use of resources; not consuming extra. Especially, making good use of time or energy.
Adjective 4 meanings
Making good, thorough, or careful use of resources; not consuming extra. Especially, making good use of time or energy.
“An efficient process would automate all the routine work.”
Expressing the proportion of consumed energy that was successfully used in a process; the ratio of useful output to total input.
“The motor is only 20% efficient at that temperature.”
Causing effects, producing results; bringing into being; initiating change (rare except in philosophical and legal expression efficient cause = causative factor or agent).
“Ownership, maintenance, or use of the automobile need not be the direct and efficient cause of the injury sustained”
effective, efficacious
Etymology
1398, “making,” from Old French, from Latin efficientem, nominative efficiēns, participle of efficere (“work out, accomplish”) (see effect). Meaning “productive, skilled” is from 1787. Efficiency apartment is first recorded 1930, American English.
Similar and opposite words
EFFICIENT at a glance
EFFICIENT has 9 letters and scores 17 points in Scrabble (E 1 + F 4 + F 4 + I 1 + C 3 + I 1 + E 1 + N 1 + T 1) and 19 in Words With Friends, before board bonuses. It ranks #3,415 by how often it appears in everyday English. It is valid in ENABLE, NWL2023, Collins/SOWPODS.
Rhymes with efficient
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