ster·ile

(stĕr′əl, -īl′)

adj.

a. Not producing or incapable of producing offspring.

b. Not producing or incapable of producing seed, fruit, spores, or other reproductive structures. Used of plants or their parts.

2. Producing little or no vegetation; unfruitful: sterile land.

3. Free from live bacteria or other microorganisms: a sterile operating area; sterile instruments.

4. Lacking imagination, creativity, or vitality.

5. Lacking the power to function; not productive or effective; fruitless: a sterile discussion.

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin sterilis.]

ster′ile·ly adv.

ster′ile·ness, ste·ril′i·ty (stə-rĭl′ĭ-tē) n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

impotence, sterility - Impotence is the male's inability to copulate or get an erection; sterility is the inability of either a male or female to procreate.

sterility

noun

1. infertility, childlessness, infecundity (technical) This disease causes sterility in both males and females.

2. emptiness, futility, banality, worthlessness, hollowness, meaninglessness, barrenness, senselessness, aimlessness, purposelessness, valuelessness the sterility of Dorothea's life in industry

Collins Thesaurus of the English Language – Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2002

sterility

noun

1. The state or condition of being unable to reproduce sexually:

barrenness, infertility, sterilization.

2. The state or condition of being free from microorganisms:

sterilization.

3. A lack of excitement, liveliness, or interest:

asepticism, blandness, colorlessness, drabness, dreariness, dryness, dullness, flatness, flavorlessness, insipidity, insipidness, jejuneness, lifelessness, sterileness, stodginess, vapidity, vapidness, weariness.

Translations

عُقْم، تَعْقيم

sterilita

sterilitet

Sterilität

stérilité

sterilitás

ófrjósemi

sterilit...

sterilitet

kısırlık

不孕不育无菌

sterility

[steˈrɪlɪtɪ] N → esterilidad f

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

sterility

[stəˈrɪləti] n

[dressing, equipment, water] → stérilité f

(= infertility) [person, animal] → stérilité f

[debate, relationship, statistics] → stérilité f

Collins English/French Electronic Resource. © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

sterility

(of animal, soil) → Unfruchtbarkeit f; (of person also) → Sterilität f; (fig: = fruitlessness also) → Ergebnislosigkeit f

(= absence of contamination, fig) → Sterilität f

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

sterility

[stɛˈrɪlɪtɪ] n → sterilità

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

sterile

(ˈsterail) adjective

1. (of soil, plants, humans and other animals) unable to produce crops, seeds, children or young.

2. free from germs. A surgeon's equipment must be absolutely sterile.

steˈrility (-ˈri-) noun

ˈsterilize, ˈsterilise (-ri-) verb

1. to make (a woman etc) sterile.

2. to kill germs in (eg milk) or on (eg surgical instruments) by boiling.

ˌsteriliˈzation, ˌsteriliˈsation noun

ste·ril·i·ty

n. esterilidad, incapacidad de concebir o procrear.

sterility

n esterilidad f

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

"Sterility or estility," answered Pedro, "it is all the same in the end.

View in context

And this is the dissolution:-- In plants that grow in the earth, as well as in animals that move on the earth's surface, fertility and sterility of soul and body occur when the circumferences of the circles of each are completed, which in short-lived existences pass over a short space, and in long-lived ones over a long space.

View in context

He reproaches his former colleagues with being sterile and shows them that their sterility is the result of their not believing in anything.

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As to the moral part of his character, the depth of his talent for accounts, and his ingenuity in making sterility itself productive, were much boasted of.

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These plains are often of a desolate sterility; mere sandy wastes, formed of the detritus of the granite heights, destitute of trees and herbage, scorched by the ardent and reflected rays of the summer's sun, and in winter swept by chilling blasts from the snow-clad mountains.

View in context

He is an illustration of the period of culture in which the faculty of appreciation has obtained such a preponderance over that of production that the latter sinks into a kind of rank sterility, and the mental condition becomes analogous to that of a malarious bog.

View in context

Sterility has been said to be the bane of horticulture; but on this view we owe variability to the same cause which produces sterility; and variability is the source of all the choicest productions of the garden.

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The different degrees of this flood are such certain indications of the fruitfulness or sterility of the ensuing year, that it is publicly proclaimed in Cairo how much the water hath gained each night.

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The next day the wind came from the south, and the balloon moved slowly over a vast plateau of mountains: there, were extinct craters; here, barren ravines; not a drop of water on those parched crests; piles of broken rocks; huge stony masses scattered hither and thither, and, interspersed with whitish marl, all indicated the most complete sterility.

View in context

Behind the chapel extended, surrounded by two high hedges of hazel, elder and white thorn, and a deep ditch, the little inclosure - uncultivated, though gay in its sterility; because the mosses there grew thick, wild heliotrope and ravenelles there mingled perfumes, while from beneath an ancient chestnut issued a crystal spring, a prisoner in its marble cistern, and on the thyme all around alighted thousands of bees from the neighboring plants, whilst chaffinches and redthroats sang cheerfully among the flower-spangled hedges.

View in context

An air of sterility prevailed over these savage wastes.

View in context

It was only to be found by continuous excursions into either realm, and though proportion is the final secret, to espouse it at the outset is to insure sterility.

View in context

Noun	1.	sterility - (of non-living objects) the state of being free of pathogenic organisms antisepsis, asepsis, sterileness sanitariness - the state of being conducive to health
	2.	sterility - the state of being unable to produce offspring; in a woman it is an inability to conceive; in a man it is an inability to impregnate infertility physical condition, physiological condition, physiological state - the condition or state of the body or bodily functions impotence, impotency - an inability (usually of the male animal) to copulate barrenness - the state (usually of a woman) of having no children or being unable to have children cacogenesis - inability to produce hybrids that are both viable and fertile dysgenesis - infertility between hybrids