Inefficient

//ˌɪn.ɪˈfɪʃ.ənt// adj, noun

adj, noun ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A person who cannot or does not work efficiently.

    "Two men were put to work who could not set their looms; a third man was taken on who helped the inefficients to set the looms. The other weavers thought this was a breach of their union rules and 18 of them struck […]"

Adjective
  1. 1
    Not efficient; not producing the effect intended or desired; inefficacious.

    "Celery is an inefficient food."

  2. 2
    Incapable of, or indisposed to, effective action; habitually slack or unproductive; effecting little or nothing.

    "inefficient workers"

Adjective
  1. 1
    lacking the ability or skill to perform effectively; inadequate wordnet
  2. 2
    not producing desired results; wasteful wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
ineffectiveartlessawkwardcarelessfutilehalf assed

Example

More examples

"The program's memory management was so inefficient that it actually damaged the RAM somehow!"

Etymology

From in- + efficient.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.