Synonyms for effeteness
- debility
- decrepitude
- delicacy
- disease
- enervation
- etiolation
- exhaustion
- flimsiness
- frailness
- frailty
- inability
- inadequacy
- incapacity
- incompetence
- ineffectualness
- infirmity
- insignificance
- insufficiency
- lameness
- languor
- lassitude
- malaise
- senility
- unhealthiness
- weakness
- infirmness
- sickliness
Antonyms for effeteness
- ability
- good health
- health
- healthiness
- robustness
- strength
- sufficiency
- vigor
- effectiveness
- heartiness
- power
- soundness
EXAMPLES FROM THE WEB FOR EFFETENESS
In these things, he said, lay the greatness of America and the effeteness of England.
The effeteness of the Mother Country is about to be put to the proof.
There was nothing to choose between them in the way of incompetence and effeteness.
The Church had created art, had cherished it for centuries; and now by the effeteness of her sons she was cast into a corner.
WORD ORIGIN
1620s, from Latin effetus (usually in fem. effeta) "exhausted, unproductive, worn out (with bearing offspring), past bearing," literally "that has given birth," from a lost verb, *efferi, from ex- "out" (see ex-) + fetus "childbearing, offspring" (see fetus). Figurative use is earliest in English; literal use is rare. Sense of "exhausted" is 1660s; that of "intellectually or morally exhausted" (1790) led to "decadent" (19c.).