inefficient

See also: inefficiënt

English

Etymology

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.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˌɪn.ɪˈfɪʃ.ənt/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪʃənt

Adjective

inefficient (comparative more inefficient, superlative most inefficient)

1. Not efficient; not producing the effect intended or desired; inefficacious.

   Celery is an inefficient food.

2. Incapable of, or indisposed to, effective action; habitually slack or unproductive; effecting little or nothing.

   inefficient workers

   an inefficient administrator

   Jessica was terribly inefficient at cleaning, so her brother usually had to clean the whole room.

   • 1987 January 17, Ronald Reagan, Presidential Radio Address:

     The Defense Department, for example, has greatly expanded competitive bidding and is this year submitting to Congress the first-ever 2-year defense budget to replace the old, inefficient, year-by-year process.

   • 2007 October 13, Will Hutton, “Will China's next leader be its Gorbachev?”, in The Observer‎^[1], →ISSN, archived from the original on 9 January 2025:

     [Gorbachev] did not champion perestroika and glasnost alone; much of the nomenklatura had decided that the Soviet economic and social model was dysfunctional, corrupt and endemically inefficient and had to change.

Antonyms

• efficient

Derived terms

• inefficiently

Translations

not efficient; not producing the effect intended or desired

• Bulgarian: безрезултатен (bg) (bezrezultaten), безполезен (bg) (bezpolezen)
• Czech: neefektivní
• Finnish: tehoton (fi)
• French: inefficace (fr)
• Irish: neamhéifeachtúil
• Italian: inefficiente (it), inadeguato (it), inefficace (it)
• Polish: niewydajny, niewydolny
• Portuguese: ineficiente (pt)
• Romanian: neeficient (ro), ineficient (ro)
• Spanish: ineficiente, ineficaz
• Swedish: ineffektiv (sv)
• Turkish: verimsiz (tr)

incapable of, or indisposed to, effective action

• Bulgarian: неспособен (bg) (nesposoben), некадърен (bg) (nekadăren)
• Czech: neschopný (cs)
• Finnish: saamaton (fi), aikaansaamaton (fi)
• Ido: nekapabla (io)
• Italian: a scartamento ridotto
• Swedish: improduktiv (sv), verkningslös (sv)

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

Translations to be checked

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: ^{(please verify)} 无结果 (wú jié guǒ)

• German: ^{(please verify)} ineffizient (de)

Noun

inefficient (plural inefficients)

1. A person who cannot or does not work efficiently.
   • 1889, New York (State). Dept. of Labor. Bureau of Statistics, Annual Report (part 2, page 127)

     Two men were put to work who could not set their looms; a third man was taken on who helped the inefficients to set the looms. The other weavers thought this was a breach of their union rules and 18 of them struck […]

   • 1903, Jack London, The People of the Abyss, Chapter 17:

     A general shaking up of the workers from top to bottom would result; and when equilibrium had been restored, the number of the inefficients at the bottom of the Abyss would have been increased by hundreds of thousands.