sterile.
Unable to reproduce (or procreate).
Meaning & usage
Unable to reproduce (or procreate).
Terse; lacking sentiment or emotional stimulation, as in a manner of speaking.
Fruitless, uninspiring, or unproductive.
Germless; free from all living or viable microorganisms.
a sterile kitchen table
Permanently uninhabitable (as in a planet like Earth) to all life, including even microbes.
Free from dangerous objects, as a zone in an airport that can be only be entered via a security checkpoint.
Of weapons: foreign-made and untraceable to the United States.
Where this word comes from
From Middle French stérile, from Latin sterilis (“barren, futile”). See also Ancient Greek στεῖρα (steîra).
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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.