efficient.
Making good, thorough, or careful use of resources; not consuming extra. Especially, making good use of time or energy.
Meaning & usage
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.
Our cleaners are almost too efficient: they throw away anything left out on a desk.
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
Where this word comes from
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.
A cause; something that causes an effect.
Where this word comes from
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.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.