Today's Word "Effete"
Published in Vocabulary
effete \ee-FEET\ (adjective) - Depleted, exhausted, lacking strength, vitality or efficacy; effeminate; infertile.
"When revolutionaries asked Russian Tsar Nicholas II to abandon the throne in 1917, his regime had become so effete that he did so without resistance."
From the Latin effetus "worn out, exhausted" consisting of ex- "out of" + fetus "filled with young, pregnant." The Prot-Indo-European root of "fetus" was dhe-, which, suffixed with -t gave us not only "fetus," but also "fawn." The latter came down from Old French feon "young animal," a reduction of Vulgar Latin feton-, a form of Latin "fetus," which ultimately came to mean "offspring." Suffixed with -m and -n, it developed into "feminine," the French reflex of Latin femina "woman." With the suffixes -l and -k, the same root turns up in "felicity" taken from Latin felix (felic-s) "fruitful, lucky, happy.
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