• ih-FEET • adjective
1: no longer fertile
2 a: having lost character, vitality, or strength
b: marked by weakness or decadence
c: soft or delicate from or as if from a pampered existence; also : characteristic of an effete person
3: effeminate
[Ro] epuizat, uzat, slabit, stors; nerodnic, sterp; inutil; rasfatat; efeminat;
Example sentence:
Virginia Woolf is often depicted as a dreamy, effete snob, agonizing all day over a single adjective while sipping tea….
Virginia Woolf este dese ori reprezentată ca o snoabă visătoare, efeminată, care se chinuie toată ziua asupra unui adjectiv, srobind ceai …
(Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune, November 2, 2008)
Effete derives from Latin effetus, meaning no longer fruitful, and for a brief time in English it was used to describe an animal no longer capable of producing offspring. For most of its existence in English, however, the use of effete has been entirely figurative. For many years, the usual figurative sense of the word was exhausted or worn out, but today effete is more likely to suggest overrefinement, weakness of character, snobbery, and effeminacy.
Effete first showed signs of acquiring these shades of meaning in the 1920s, but it wasn’t until the 1940s that the new effete clearly established itself in reputable writing. One example can be found in John Steinbeck’s 1945 novel Cannery Row: “now and then some effete customer would order a stinger or an anisette.”
