effete
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /ɪˈfiːt/
ipa: /ɪˈfit/
ipa: /ɛˈfit/
rhymes: -iːt
Forms: form: more effete
form: most effete
form: effœte
Etymology: From Latin effētus (“exhausted”, literally “that has given birth”), 1620s.
Senses: examples: text: 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.
ref: 1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition II, section 4, member 1, subsection v:
synonyms: word: low
word: used up
word: consumed
word: depleted
word: done up
word: effete
word: exhausted
word: expended
word: gone
word: finished
word: forworn
word: low
word: spent
word: used up
qualifier: quantities etc
glosses: exhausted, spent, worn-out.
raw_tags: of substances
examples: text: 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.
ref: 1929, George Macaulay Trevelyan, History of England: From 1485 to the End of the Reign of Queen Anne, 1714, page 457:
text: They used rock'n'roll as a weapon against itself. With all instruments but guitar, bass, drums, and voice written off as effete, as elitist accoutrements of a professionalist cult of technique, it was music best suited to anger and frustration, […]
ref: 1989, Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces, Faber & Faber, published 2009:
text: A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete core of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals (Spiro Agnew, October 1969)
ref: 2007, Jules Witcover, Very Strange Bedfellows: The Short and Unhappy Marriage of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, page 74:
text: Most writers merely produce effete works on paper, you might say, but Kerouac went and wrestled with the tree itself.
ref: 2007 August 19, Luc Sante, “On the Road Again”, in New York Times:
text: For the President, the EU is an essentially effete project – a civilian power that likes to see itself as human rights based and collegiate, but with no hard power of its own.
ref: 2018, Michael Cottakis, Colliding worlds: Donald Trump and the European Union:
synonyms: word: low
word: puny
word: anemic
word: breakable
word: broken-down
word: damaged
word: debilitated
word: decrepit
word: delicate
word: dickless
word: effete
word: enervated
word: enfeebled
word: exhausted
word: faint
word: feeble
word: flimsy
word: fragile
word: frail
word: harmed
word: hurt
word: impaired
word: impotent
word: infirm
word: injured
word: languid
word: low
word: powerless
word: prostrated
word: prostrate
word: puny
word: raddled
word: resistless
word: sapped
word: slightsoft
word: softened
word: susceptible
word: tender
word: tired
word: torpid
word: unresistant
word: vincible
word: vulnerable
word: wasted
word: weak
word: weakened
word: weary
word: weedy
word: wimpy
word: worn out
word: yielding
glosses: Lacking strength or vitality; feeble, powerless, impotent.
examples: text: In fact, one obvious project of the MLF […] is to counter the idea that lobster is unusually luxe or unhealthy, suitable only for effete palates or the occasional blow-the-diet treat.
ref: 2005, David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster and Other Essays, New York: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 238:
synonyms: dissipated
incontinent
glosses: Decadent, weak through self-indulgence.
examples: text: The Port Washington players all wear matching socks and shorts and tucked-in shirts. They look sharp but effete, a mannequinish aspect to them.
ref: 1996, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest […], Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 266:
synonyms: word: fey
word: pretentious
word: stilted
word: affected
word: effete
word: fey
word: recherché
word: hoity-toity
word: overrefined
word: pansified
word: precious
word: pretentious
word: smug
word: stagy
word: stilted
word: theatrical
word: Woosterian
glosses: Affected, overrefined.
raw_tags: of a person
Derived terms: effetely
effeteness
noneffete
uneffete