Fecundity
noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Ability to produce offspring. uncountable, usually
"In the early days the reviewers compared him to the late Douglas Adams, but then Terry went on to write books as enthusiastically as Douglas avoided writing them, and now, if there is any comparison to be made of anything from the formal rules of a Pratchett novel to the sheer prolific fecundity of the man, it might be to P. G. Wodehouse."
- 2 the quality of something that causes or assists healthy growth wordnet
- 3 Ability to cause growth or increase. uncountable, usually
"[I]t would not be very much less absurd for someone to write about New York City after having spent only a few years or a few decades in this metropolis of inexhaustible adventure, of terrifying emotional fecundity, of uncapturable character."
- 4 the intellectual productivity of a creative imagination wordnet
- 5 Number, rate, or capacity of offspring production. uncountable, usually
"The soil spawned humanity, as it bred frogs in the Rains, and the gap of the sickness of one season was filled to overflowing by the fecundity of the next."
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- 6 the state of being fertile; capable of producing offspring wordnet
- 7 Rate of production of young by a female. uncountable, usually
Example
More examples"And he put it to us in this way—marking the points with a lean forefinger—as we sat and lazily admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it) and his fecundity."
Etymology
From Latin fēcunditās (“fruitfulness, fertility”), from fēcundus, equivalent to fecund + -ity.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.