effete

comparative more effete · superlative most effete · alternative effœte

1. obsoletequantities etcexhausted, spent, worn-out.

   Nature is not effœte, as he saith, or so lavish, to bestow all her gifts upon an age, but hath reserved some for posterity, to shew her power, that she is still the same, and not old or consumed.

   1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition II, section 4, member 1, subsection v

   Synonyms: low, used up, consumed, depleted, out, done up, exhausted, all

2. Lacking strength or vitality; feeble, powerless, impotent.

   Most writers merely produce effete works on paper, you might say, but Kerouac went and wrestled with the tree itself.

   2007 August 19, Luc Sante, “On the Road Again”, in New York Times

   4 more examples

   Amid the effete monarchies and princedoms of feudal Europe, morally and materially exhausted by the Thirty Years' War, the only hope of resistance to France lay in the little Republic of merchants, Holland.

   1929, George Macaulay Trevelyan, History of England: From 1485 to the End of the Reign of Queen Anne, 1714, page 457

   They used rock'n'roll as a weapon against itself. With all instruments but guitar, bass, drums, and voice written off as effete, as elitist accoutrements of a professionalist cult of technique, it was music best suited to anger and frustration, […]

   1989, Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces, Faber & Faber, published 2009

   A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete core of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals (Spiro Agnew, October 1969)

   2007, Jules Witcover, Very Strange Bedfellows: The Short and Unhappy Marriage of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, page 74

   For the President, the EU is an essentially effete project – a civilian power that likes to see itself as human rights based and collegiate, but with no hard power of its own.

   2018, Michael Cottakis, Colliding worlds: Donald Trump and the European Union

   Synonyms: low, puny, anemic, breakable, broken-down, damaged, debilitated, decrepit

3. Decadent, weak through self-indulgence.

   In fact, one obvious project of the MLF […] is to counter the idea that lobster is unusually luxe or unhealthy, suitable only for effete palates or the occasional blow-the-diet treat.

   2005, David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster and Other Essays, New York: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 238

   Synonyms: dissipated, incontinent

4. Affected, overrefined.

   The Port Washington players all wear matching socks and shorts and tucked-in shirts. They look sharp but effete, a mannequinish aspect to them.

   1996, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest […], Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 266

   Synonyms: fey, pretentious, stilted, affected, fey, recherché, hoity-toity, overrefined