FluentPlex

efficient

/ɪˈfɪʃənt/ adjective B1
  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.· Our cleaners are almost too efficient: they throw away anything left out on a desk.
  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
  4. effective, efficacious
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From the library

And yet, when we closed our door on Monday evening, we were as efficient an office as any in the government service.
Sherlock Holmes: The Bruce-Partington Plans, p. 21 · B2
“When I first came up to London I had rooms in Montague Street, just round the corner from the British Museum, and there I waited, filling in my too abundant leisure time by studying all those branches of science which might make me more efficient.
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, p. 5 · B2
These digital approvals are undeniably efficient, but they completely erase the beautiful individuality that a handwritten name once so proudly represented.
The Disappearing Signature, p. 1 · C1

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Words, meanings, pronunciations and translations from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); how common each word is from wordfreq. Made into this dictionary by FluentPlex.