efficient — Dictionnaire anglais

Adjectif

1. Making good, thorough, or careful use of resources; not consuming extra. Especially, making good use of time or energy.

   Synonymes

   leanbusinesslike

   Exemples

   An efficient process would automate all the routine work.

   Our cleaners are almost too efficient: they throw away anything left out on a desk.

   Plus d’exemples (1)

   An artificial kidney these days still means a refrigerator-sized dialysis machine. Such devices mimic[…]real kidneys[…]. But they are nothing like as efficient, and can cause bleeding, clotting and infection—not to mention inconvenience for patients, who typically need to be hooked up to one three times a week for hours at a time.

2. Expressing the proportion of consumed energy that was successfully used in a process; the ratio of useful output to total input.

   Exemples

   The motor is only 20% efficient at that temperature.

3. Causing effects, producing results; bringing into being; initiating change (rare except in philosophical and legal expression efficient cause = causative factor or agent).

   Exemples

   Ownership, maintenance, or use of the automobile need not be the direct and efficient cause of the injury sustained

   It was well said of Plotinus, that the stars were significant, but not efficient.

4. effective, efficacious

   Usage

   • proscribed

   Exemples

   Plus d’exemples (1)

   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!

   The Efficient Cause is that from which emanates the force that produces the Effect

Nom

1. A cause; something that causes an effect.

   Usage

   • désuet

   Exemples

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

   Plus d’exemples (1)

   This implies, that something happens without a cause. If it should be said, that motive in this case is not the efficient of the action or doing — this is granted; but at the same time, for reasons already given, it is denied, that the man himself is the efficient cause of it.

Adjectif

1. being effective without wasting time or effort or expense

   Antonymes

   inefficient

   Exemples

   an efficient production manager

   efficient engines save gas

2. able to accomplish a purpose; functioning effectively

   Synonymes

   effective

   Exemples

   effective personnel

   an efficient secretary

   Plus d’exemples (1)

   the efficient cause of the revolution