Meaning & use
infertile
Last updated
Meaning
adjectivenot comparable
Not able to produce children, offspring, crops, fruit, or new growth.
Grammar: Can describe people, animals, soil, or plants; it is not usually graded with more or most.
Patterns
- infertile soil
- an infertile couple
- infertile seeds
The old field was too infertile to grow tomatoes without compost.
An infertile couple may explore adoption or medical treatment.
The tree looked healthy but produced infertile seeds.
Common combinations
- infertile soil
- Clover was planted to improve the infertile soil.
- infertile couple
- The clinic offered counseling for an infertile couple.
- infertile period
- The breeder tracked the mare's infertile period carefully.
- remain infertile
- Without water, the seedlings will remain infertile.
Synonyms and how they differ
- sterile
- Sterile can mean unable to reproduce or completely free of germs; context decides, while infertile is not about cleanliness.
- barren
- Barren strongly describes land that cannot grow crops or plants; infertile is also used for people and animals.
- unproductive
- Unproductive means not yielding results and is wider than the biological sense of infertile.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: infertile or sterile?
infertile vs sterile
Sterile commonly means free from bacteria in hospitals, while infertile means unable to reproduce; only sterile has both uses depending on context.
Practice
Which word best completes the sentence: After years of drought, the valley's soil became ______ and produced little wheat.
Choose one answer.
Soil that cannot support crops is infertile. Infectious concerns disease transmission, inordinate means excessive, and inoperative means not working; none describe soil productivity.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “infertile”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.