inefficient.
Not efficient; not producing the effect intended or desired; inefficacious.
Meaning & usage
Not efficient; not producing the effect intended or desired; inefficacious.
Celery is an inefficient food.
Incapable of, or indisposed to, effective action; habitually slack or unproductive; effecting little or nothing.
inefficient workers
an inefficient administrator
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *né Proto-Indo-European *n̥- Proto-Italic *n̥- Latin in-bor. Middle English in- English in- English efficient English inefficient From in- + efficient.
A person who cannot or does not work efficiently.
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *né Proto-Indo-European *n̥- Proto-Italic *n̥- Latin in-bor. Middle English in- English in- English efficient English inefficient From in- + efficient.
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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.