efficient

comparative more efficient · superlative most efficient

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

   An efficient process would automate all the routine work.

   2 more examples

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

   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.

   2013 June 1, “A better waterworks”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8838, archived from the original on 11 Mar 2023, page 5 (Technology Quarterly)

   Synonyms: lean, businesslike

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

   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).

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

   1 more example

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

   1614, Walter Ralegh [i.e., Walter Raleigh], The Historie of the World […], London: […] William Stansby for Walter Burre, […], →OCLC, (please specify |book=1 to 5)

4. proscribedold useeffective, efficacious

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

   1856, William Dexter Wilson, An Elementary Treatise on Logic

   1 more example

   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!

   1801, Robert Southey, “(please specify the page)”, in Thalaba the Destroyer, volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: […] [F]or T[homas] N[orton] Longman and O[wen] Rees, […], by Biggs and Cottle, […], →OCLC

plural efficients

1. obsoleteA cause; something that causes an effect.

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

   1643, Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, I.14

   1 more example

   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.

   a. 1758, Jonathan Edwards, Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity