Meaning & use
fertility
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Meanings
noununcountable
The ability of a person, animal or plant to have young or produce seeds and fruit.
Grammar: Not used with an or an: fertility declined, not a fertility declined.
Patterns
- fertility of something
- male/female fertility
Doctors checked her fertility before the couple began treatment.
Stress and poor diet can lower fertility in some animals.
The study measured fertility across several generations of fruit flies.
noununcountable
The richness of soil or land, meaning how well it can grow healthy crops.
Grammar: Usually about land: soil fertility, not a soil fertilities.
Patterns
- the fertility of the soil
Farmers rotate crops to protect the fertility of their fields.
Regular flooding gave the valley remarkable fertility.
Adding compost restored the fertility of the worn-out garden bed.
Common combinations
- fertility rate
- The country's fertility rate has fallen over the last fifty years.
- soil fertility
- Planting beans improves soil fertility.
- fertility treatment
- They spent two years on fertility treatment.
- boost fertility
- Some farmers use manure to boost fertility.
- reduced fertility
- The chemical was linked to reduced fertility in fish.
Synonyms and how they differ
- fecundity
- Fecundity is a more technical word for the potential to produce many offspring, while fertility is the everyday term.
- productivity
- Productivity covers any output, so it is broader than fertility, which is tied to reproduction or crop growth.
- richness
- Richness is a looser word that fits soil but would sound odd for people or animals.
Opposites
Word family
- fertile adjective
- able to produce young or crops easily
- fertilize verb
- to make an egg start developing, or to add nutrients to soil
- fertilizer noun
- a substance added to soil to help plants grow
- infertility noun
- the inability to have young
Commonly confused: fertility or fecundity?
fertility vs fecundity
Fecundity is the capacity to produce many offspring; fertility is whether reproduction or growth actually works.
Practice
Farmers in the region add compost each year to maintain the ______ of their soil.
Choose one answer.
A noun is needed after 'the', and 'the fertility of their soil' means how well it grows crops. 'Fertilizer' is a substance, so it cannot be 'of their soil' in this meaning.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “fertility”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.