efficient

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   being effective without wasting time or effort or expense

   an efficient production manager

2. 2
   adj

   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.

3. 3
   adj

   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.

4. 4
   adj

   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

5. 5
   adj

   effective, efficacious

   Ye wake no more to anguish;‥ ye have borne The Chosen, the Destroyer!‥ soon his hand Shall strike the efficient blow; Soon shaking off your penal forms, shall ye, With songs of joy, amid the Eden groves, Hymn the Deliverer’s praise!

6. 6
   noun

   A cause; something that causes an effect.

   Some are without efficient, as God; others without matter, as Angels […].

7. 7
   adj

   able to accomplish a purpose

Etymology

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.