a
: wasteful of time or energy
inefficient operating procedures
c
: not producing the effect intended or desired
Synonyms
Example Sentences
The delivery system was very inefficient.
an inefficient use of fuel
Recent Examples on the Web
Walker and UConn fans will trade an inefficient shooting night for the sport’s top prize anytime.
—
Michael Shapiro, Chron, 4 Apr. 2023
Food Bank officials say though the relief is welcome, shipping bulk food is an inefficient, costly replacement for SNAP benefits.
—Annie Berman, Anchorage Daily News, 2 Apr. 2023
But North County could not stop Chesapeake from adding another run in the top of the seventh, rendering the Knights’ bottom-seven run inefficient.
—Baltimore Sun Staff, Baltimore Sun, 31 Mar. 2023
By increasing water scarcity in the American West, climate change is making this inefficient transformation of water into human food increasingly intolerable.
—Noah Gordon, The New Republic, 29 Mar. 2023
But there aren’t as many guards who take a lot of inefficient shots, and big plodding centers no longer clog the floor.
—Louisa Thomas, The New Yorker, 27 Mar. 2023
Everett Silvertips That’s about the most inefficient way to score 11 goals in 3 games possible.
—Dylan Bumbarger, oregonlive, 5 Mar. 2023
Low rents encourage inefficient use of units.
—Rachel Heller, BostonGlobe.com, 10 Feb. 2023
So even though fax machines may seem archaic, the images are often blurry and difficult to read, and the management of hundreds of incoming sheets of paper per day may seem absurdly inefficient, fax machines in health care will be here in 2023.
—Paul Hsieh, Forbes, 31 Dec. 2022
See More
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word ‘inefficient.’ Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
First Known Use
1750, in the meaning defined above
Time Traveler
The first known use of inefficient was
in 1750
Dictionary Entries Near inefficient
Cite this Entry
“Inefficient.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inefficient. Accessed 14 Apr. 2023.
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More from Merriam-Webster on inefficient
Last Updated:
6 Apr 2023
— Updated example sentences
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Merriam-Webster unabridged
неэффективный, непроизводительный, неспособный, неумелый, безрезультатный
прилагательное ↓
- неспособный, неумелый
inefficient workman — неумелый /неспособный/ работник 
- недейственный, неэффективный; малопроизводительный
inefficient measures — недейственные /неэффективные/ меры
inefficient labour — непроизводительный труд
Мои примеры
Словосочетания
problems due to the inefficiency of management — проблемы, вызванные неэффективностью управления
inefficient agriculture — слаборазвитое сельское хозяйство; неэффективное сельское хозяйство
inefficient cathode — малоэффективный катод
inefficient labor — непроизводительный труд
inefficient parking brake — неэффективный стояночный тормоз
inefficient production — недостаточная производительность; неэффективное производство
inefficient recirculation — неэффективная рециркуляция; недостаточная рециркуляция
inefficient shot — неэффективный взрыв
inefficient statistics — неэффективная статистика
inefficient supply — неудовлетворительные поставки
inefficient organization — неритмичность
Примеры с переводом
Local government was inefficient.
Местная власть оказалась неэффкетивной.
The delivery system was very inefficient.
Система доставки была очень неэффективной.
The region’s heavy industry is still inefficient and moribund.
Тяжёлая промышленность в этом регионе — по прежнему неэффективна, и отживает свой век.
Most computer users have never received any formal keyboard training. Consequently, their keyboard skills are inefficient.
Большинство компьютерных пользователей никогда не обучались работе на клавиатуре. Следовательно, их навыки работы на клавиатуре неэффективны.
The government was inert and inefficient.
Власть действовала вяло и неумело.
They were an inefficient lot.
Они были никудышными людьми.
Возможные однокоренные слова
Inefficient things waste time, money, or other resources. Your old inefficient dishwasher uses much more water and electricity than a new model would. Shame on you.
Inefficient businesses have trouble making money and growing, and an inefficient city bus system might transport just a few passengers at a time. If your car is inefficient, it gets terrible gas mileage and is expensive to drive. If something is efficient, it’s productive and inexpensive. Inefficient has the opposite meaning, which is clear from the «not» prefix in-.
Definitions of inefficient
-
adjective
not producing desired results; wasteful
“outdated and
inefficient design and methods”-
Synonyms:
-
incompetent
not qualified or suited for a purpose
-
ineffective, ineffectual, uneffective
not producing an intended effect
-
uneconomical, wasteful
inefficient in use of time and effort and materials
-
incompetent
-
adjective
lacking the ability or skill to perform effectively; inadequate
“inefficient workers”
-
synonyms:
ineffective
-
incompetent
not qualified or suited for a purpose
-
incompetent
DISCLAIMER: These example sentences appear in various news sources and books to reflect the usage of the word ‘inefficient’.
Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Vocabulary.com or its editors.
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Such form of vegetable raw materials processing is inefficient for a number of reasons.
Такая форма переработки растительного сырья малоэффективна для лечения по ряду причин.
Parallel processing, although often unavoidable, is inefficient and time-consuming.
Хотя зачастую подобная параллельная обработка неизбежна, она неэффективна и требует значительных временных затрат.
Такой порядок неэффективен, небезопасен и требует много времени.
Lithuania has inherited the camp-type system of places of confinement, which is inefficient and resource-demanding.
Meanwhile, ombudsman Vladimir
Lukin says that existing control over the army is inefficient.
Между тем уполномоченный
по правам человека Владимир Лукин считает, что существующий контроль над армией неэффективен.
The essential problem point is inefficient legislation on trade unions.
Это неэффективно, потому что отнимает намного больше времени.
Head from the Ministry of Environment
admits that the current form of organization of FEN is inefficient.
Глава Министерства окружающей среды признает,
Чтобы объяснить, как работает электричество и почему лампочки неэффективны.
Orthodox neo-classical economics suggests that intervention in markets is inefficient.
По ортодоксальной неоклассической теории вмешательство в функционирование рынков неэффективно.
But the Committee remains concerned that the existing coordination is inefficient and that HCC lacks an independent budget.
Однако Комитет продолжает беспокоить тот факт, что существующая координация неэффективна и что ВКД пока не имеет отдельной статьи в бюджете.
In addition, it
is
established that the application of one approach is inefficient for the enterprise, since the specificity of the company’s activities
is
not taken into account.
Кроме того, определено, что применение одного подхода является неэффективным для предприятия, так как не учитывается специфика деятельности компании.
A risk factor for contracting the virus
is
handling of infected poultry,
but transmission of the virus from infected birds to humans is inefficient.
Наибольший фактор риска заражения- контакт с зараженными птицами,
Automatic assembly equipment instead of manual, traditional manual assembly is inefficient, the automatic assembly equipment can greatly increase production,
reduce labor and cost.
Автоматическое сборочное оборудование вместо ручного, традиционная ручная сборка неэффективна, автоматическое сборочное оборудование может значительно увеличить производство,
снизить трудозатраты и стоимость.
The United Nations MCDA directory is inefficient since it
is
not updated by asset providers
and requesting procedures
are
too bureaucratic.
Справочник Организации Объединенных Наций по ВРСГО является неэффективным, поскольку он не обновляется странами,
предоставляющими ресурсы, а процедуры их запроса слишком забюрократизированными.
However, most irrigation is inefficient and about 60 per cent of the withdrawn water
returns to the river basin and to groundwater.
Однако в большинстве случаев орошение является неэффективным и порядка 60 процентов объема забора
воды возвращается в бассейны рек и подземные воды.
This practice of Council involvement limits the authority of the Secretary General,
dilutes his accountability and is inefficient for the effective running and management of the Organization.
Практика участия Совета ограничивает полномочия Генерального секретаря,
размывает его подотчетность и неэффективна с точки зрения результативного руководства и управления Организацией.
The protocol is inefficient and requires adding awkward kludges to firewalls and load-balancing daemons.
Протокол неэффективен и требует добавления громоздких и неудобных настроек для межсетевых экранов и служб балансировки нагрузки.
So if we say that the United Nations is inefficient and needs to
be
improved,
we need also to establish the standards necessary to
be
able to say that.
Поэтому, если мы говорим, что работа Организации Объединенных Наций является неэффективной и требует усовершенствования,
то необходимо также определить соответствующие стандарты, которые позволили бы нам сделать такой вывод.
Today, the NSR is inefficient, but we must think about the future and look beyond the horizon through the prism of geopolitics.
Сегодня СМП неэффективен, но надо думать о будущем и смотреть за горизонт через призму геополитики.
More often than not, burning biomass for use in rural areas is inefficient, unhealthy and highly polluting, particularly indoors.
Почти во всех случаях сжигание биомассы в сельских районах является неэффективным, вредным для здоровья и вызывающим сильное загрязнение способом получения энергии,
особенно в помещениях.
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We assume that everything’s becoming more efficient, and in an immediate sense that’s true; our lives are better in many ways. But that improvement has been gained through a massively inefficient use of natural resources.
Paul Hawken
PRONUNCIATION OF INEFFICIENT
GRAMMATICAL CATEGORY OF INEFFICIENT
Inefficient is an adjective.
The adjective is the word that accompanies the noun to determine or qualify it.
WHAT DOES INEFFICIENT MEAN IN ENGLISH?
Inefficiency
The term inefficiency has several meanings depending on the context in which its used: ▪ Allocative inefficiency — Allocative inefficiency is a situation in which the distribution of resources between alternatives does not fit with consumer taste. For example, a company may have the lowest costs in «productive» terms, but the result may be inefficient in allocative terms because the «true» or social cost exceeds the price that consumers are willing to pay for an extra unit of the product. This is true, for example, if the firm produces pollution. Consumers would prefer that the firm and its competitors produce less of the product and charge a higher price, to internalize the external cost. ▪ Distributive Inefficiency — refers to the inefficient distribution of income and wealth within a society. Decreasing marginal utilities of wealth suggests that more egalitarian distributions of wealth are more efficient than unegalitarian distributions. Distributive inefficiency is often associated with economic inequality. ▪ Economic inefficiency — refers to a situation where «we could be doing a better job,» i.e., attaining our goals at lower cost.
Definition of inefficient in the English dictionary
The definition of inefficient in the dictionary is unable to perform a task or function to the best advantage; wasteful or incompetent. Other definition of inefficient is unable to produce the desired result.
WORDS THAT RHYME WITH INEFFICIENT
Synonyms and antonyms of inefficient in the English dictionary of synonyms
SYNONYMS OF «INEFFICIENT»
The following words have a similar or identical meaning as «inefficient» and belong to the same grammatical category.
Translation of «inefficient» into 25 languages
TRANSLATION OF INEFFICIENT
Find out the translation of inefficient to 25 languages with our English multilingual translator.
The translations of inefficient from English to other languages presented in this section have been obtained through automatic statistical translation; where the essential translation unit is the word «inefficient» in English.
Translator English — Chinese
效率低的
1,325 millions of speakers
Translator English — Spanish
ineficiente
570 millions of speakers
Translator English — Hindi
अक्षम
380 millions of speakers
Translator English — Arabic
غَيْرُ فَعَّالٌ
280 millions of speakers
Translator English — Russian
неэффективный
278 millions of speakers
Translator English — Portuguese
ineficiente
270 millions of speakers
Translator English — Bengali
অদক্ষ
260 millions of speakers
Translator English — French
inefficace
220 millions of speakers
Translator English — Malay
Tidak cekap
190 millions of speakers
Translator English — German
ineffizient
180 millions of speakers
Translator English — Japanese
効率の悪い
130 millions of speakers
Translator English — Korean
비능률적인
85 millions of speakers
Translator English — Javanese
Inefficient
85 millions of speakers
Translator English — Vietnamese
không có hiệu quả
80 millions of speakers
Translator English — Tamil
திறனற்ற
75 millions of speakers
Translator English — Marathi
अकार्यक्षम
75 millions of speakers
Translator English — Turkish
yetersiz
70 millions of speakers
Translator English — Italian
inefficiente
65 millions of speakers
Translator English — Polish
nieskuteczny
50 millions of speakers
Translator English — Ukrainian
неефективний
40 millions of speakers
Translator English — Romanian
ineficient
30 millions of speakers
Translator English — Greek
ανεπαρκής
15 millions of speakers
Translator English — Afrikaans
ondoeltreffende
14 millions of speakers
Translator English — Swedish
ineffektiv
10 millions of speakers
Translator English — Norwegian
ineffektiv
5 millions of speakers
Trends of use of inefficient
TENDENCIES OF USE OF THE TERM «INEFFICIENT»
The term «inefficient» is quite widely used and occupies the 26.939 position in our list of most widely used terms in the English dictionary.
FREQUENCY
Quite widely used
The map shown above gives the frequency of use of the term «inefficient» in the different countries.
Principal search tendencies and common uses of inefficient
List of principal searches undertaken by users to access our English online dictionary and most widely used expressions with the word «inefficient».
FREQUENCY OF USE OF THE TERM «INEFFICIENT» OVER TIME
The graph expresses the annual evolution of the frequency of use of the word «inefficient» during the past 500 years. Its implementation is based on analysing how often the term «inefficient» appears in digitalised printed sources in English between the year 1500 and the present day.
Examples of use in the English literature, quotes and news about inefficient
10 QUOTES WITH «INEFFICIENT»
Famous quotes and sentences with the word inefficient.
The interests of the Soviet Union are in controlling highly developed countries and having the benefit of their economies so that they can run their own inefficient empire.
Dealing with complexity is an inefficient and unnecessary waste of time, attention and mental energy. There is never any justification for things being complex when they could be simple.
Worry is a cycle of inefficient thoughts whirling around a center of fear.
You wouldn’t want to land on the Moon and launch to Mars. That would be very inefficient.
The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.
Poorly paid labor is inefficient labor, the world over.
I would say that financial markets are very inefficient, and capable of extremes of being completely dysfunctional.
We assume that everything’s becoming more efficient, and in an immediate sense that’s true; our lives are better in many ways. But that improvement has been gained through a massively inefficient use of natural resources.
Clearing your head of distractions in order to notice and understand the people you are with can feel inefficient — there are so many other people and issues to think about. But being present makes you effective.
We waste an awful lot of energy as a Nation through inefficient use of energy.
10 ENGLISH BOOKS RELATING TO «INEFFICIENT»
Discover the use of inefficient in the following bibliographical selection. Books relating to inefficient and brief extracts from same to provide context of its use in English literature.
1
Inefficient Markets: An Introduction to Behavioral Finance
This book describes an alternative approach to the study of financial markets: behavioral finance.
2
Inefficient Markets: An Introduction to Behavioral Finance
This book describes an alternative approach to the study of financial markets: behavioral finance.
3
Financial Crisis and Credit Crunch As a Result of …
This paper develops a model of private debt financing under inefficient financial intermediation.
Zhaohui Chen, Jorge A. Chan-Lau, 1998
4
The Inefficient Stock Market: What Pays Off and Why
The book tackles important issues in today’s financial market in a highly conversational and entertaining manner that will appeal to most readers.
5
DOD management examples of inefficient and ineffective …
Today, at your request, we will discuss two case studies and the related financial
and inventory management and systems modernization2 challenges facing DOD.
These case studies examine in detail the processes and data systems used by …
6
All Or Nothing: Avoiding Inefficient Compromise in …
These equilibria can be efficient or inefficient. Compromise policies are not ideal
points, so no state obtains its maximum payoff. The compromise is efficient if
there is no other choice of policies that would make all bargaining parties better
off, …
Johannes Urpelainen, 2009
7
Inefficient Lobbying, Populism and Oligarchy
k0R = λP(p) p k0P (4) g0+αs0 λR(p) 1−α(1−p) s0 (ii) Such allocation is almost
always Pareto-inefficient. Proof: See Appendix B. The intuition behind equation (
4) is analogous to the one behind equation (3): a political equilibrium equates …
8
An Inconvenient Book: Real Solutions to the World’s Biggest …
An Inconvenient Book contains hundreds of these same «why have I never heard that before?» types of facts that will leave you wondering how political correctness, special interests, and outright stupidity have gotten us so far away from the …
9
Inefficient credit booms
This paper studies the welfare properties of competitive equilibria in an economy with financial frictions hit by aggregate shocks.
Guido Lorenzoni, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2007
10
Inefficient Private Renegotiation of Sovereign Debt
Inefficient Privatt Renegotiation of Sovereign Debt The current absence of
financial assistance from the private credit markets of the developed countries for
undertaking investments in the less-developed nations is widely regarded to be …
10 NEWS ITEMS WHICH INCLUDE THE TERM «INEFFICIENT»
Find out what the national and international press are talking about and how the term inefficient is used in the context of the following news items.
The Drought and What It’s Teaching California (and Tech) about …
The Drought and What It’s Teaching California (and Tech) about Inefficient Markets Tom Gillis. Water is a basic human right and I’m not … «Forbes, Jul 15»
The Guardian view on prisons in England and Wales: dangerous …
The Guardian view on prisons in England and Wales: dangerous and inefficient. Editorial. New justice secretary Michael Gove says he is … «The Guardian, Jul 15»
Fat, Inefficient State Impedes Greece: Damianos
Former investment banker Damianos Damianos talks with Olivia Sterns about the realities for the people of Greece in the agreement with … «Bloomberg, Jul 15»
Inefficient ARDA Blasted For National Hunger, Starvation
Failure by the Agricultural Rural Development Authority (ARDA) to fully execute its mandate has been identified as the missing link to the … «RadioVop, Jul 15»
Grants Help Volunteer Fire Department Update Old, Inefficient …
PEMBROKE, Ky. — It’s a struggle that could put your safety at risk: volunteer fire departments trying to answer calls with old and inefficient … «NewsChannel5.com, Jul 15»
Report slams ‘inefficient‘ prisons
WA taxpayers are forking out up to $1 million a day accommodating prisoners who have returned to jail according to a report which has … «The West Australian, Jul 15»
Striking fishermen slam “inefficient” Government controls
The crackdown advised by EU and implemented by the military junta leaves workers disgruntled. The crisis in the sector due to past failures. «AsiaNews.it, Jul 15»
Jalna police chief cracks down on ‘inefficient‘ cops
AURANGABAD: Jalna superintendent of police Jyoti Priya Singh has launched an all-out drive not only against those involved in illicit trades in … «Times of India, Jul 15»
Commentary: Understanding the differences between efficient and …
It’s important to recognize that there is inefficient debt and efficient debt. As a general rule, we agree that inefficient debt (typically consumer … «Brainerd Daily Dispatch, Jul 15»
Family Court office backward, inefficient
I am writing this letter with pain and sadness in my heart because of the unnecessary suffering that the public is experiencing at the Family … «Jamaica Gleaner, Jul 15»
REFERENCE
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