Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Not capable of producing a desired effect or result; ineffective.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Not efficacious; not having power to produce the effect desired; of inadequate force.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Not efficacious; not having power to produce the effect desired; inadequate; incompetent; inefficient; impotent.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Incapable of having the intended consequence.
  • adjective Not effective.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective lacking the power to produce a desired effect

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The sword is the braver way, although all ways are equally inefficacious.

    Chapter 18 2010

  • And if experience showed the inefficacy of bills of rights, it also showed they were “rarely inefficacious” and better than nothing.

    Ratification Pauline Maier 2010

  • Even an executive customer service rep pledge to resolve the situation was inefficacious.

    Bank of America Screws Even Ex-Employees Of 21 Years On Mortgages - The Consumerist 2010

  • And if experience showed the inefficacy of bills of rights, it also showed they were “rarely inefficacious” and better than nothing.

    Ratification Pauline Maier 2010

  • And if experience showed the inefficacy of bills of rights, it also showed they were “rarely inefficacious” and better than nothing.

    Ratification Pauline Maier 2010

  • Going to school can appear to be a waste of time and inefficacious.

    Archive 2009-02-01 Paul 2009

  • Going to school can appear to be a waste of time and inefficacious.

    Young Adult Spotlight: "Truancy Origins" by Isamu Fukui (Tor) Paul 2009

  • Whatever one thinks of the death penalty, it appears quite obvious that the decision to seek capital punishment will be a mixture of inefficacious and antagonizing to those Puerto Ricans who believe that they were promised a measure of genuine "sovereignty" in the "compact" the Congress passed in 1950.

    Balkinization 2007

  • High-flying oratory proved utterly inefficacious in winning any major foreign-policy result he set himself to bring home in triumph.

    Terry Krepel: John L. Perry's Greatest Obama-Hating Hits 2009

  • High-flying oratory proved utterly inefficacious in winning any major foreign-policy result he set himself to bring home in triumph.

    Terry Krepel: Our Newsmax Problem 2009

Comments

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  • inefficacious on National Public radio today (thursday, 20 September 2007).

    September 20, 2007

  • He also used on the Daily Show last night, I think.

    Take efficacy, add some affixes, and bingo, you have a word hardly any can understand.

    September 21, 2007