fecund
- producing or capable of producing offspring, fruit, vegetation, etc., in abundance; prolific; fruitful: fecund parents; fecund farmland.
- very productive or creative intellectually: the fecund years of the Italian Renaissance.
Origin of fecund
Examples from the Web for fecund
Contemporary Examples
Best to go with the fecund middle period, three novels sometimes referred to as “The London Trilogy.”
Whether he was writing about sex, golf, or life in a small town, the fecund mind who gave the world Rabbit was never at rest.
Historical Examples
A woman who has one child has proved that she is fecund, but has not proved that she is fertile.
The Task of Social HygieneHavelock Ellis
A woman with six children has proved that she is not only fecund but fertile.
The Task of Social HygieneHavelock Ellis
It was bliss, it was the nucleolating of the fecund darkness.
The RainbowD. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
The fecund sap, their generative virtue, escapes and diminishes at every gleam.
The SeaJules Michelet
Where is this fecund chaos, rich in worlds, that hides the generations that are to be?
The Philosophy of DisenchantmentEdgar Saltus
fecund
- greatly productive; fertile
- intellectually productive; prolific
Word Origin
Word Origin and History for fecund
adj.
early 15c., from Middle French fecond, from Latin fecundus "fruitful, fertile, productive," from *fe-kwondo-, suffixed form of Latin root *fe-, corresponding to PIE *dhe(i)- "to suck, suckle," also "produce, yield" (cf. Sanskrit dhayati "sucks," dhayah "nourishing;" Greek thele "mother's breast, nipple," thelys "female, fruitful;" Old Church Slavonic dojiti "to suckle," dojilica "nurse," deti "child;" Lithuanian dele "leech;" Old Prussian dadan "milk;" Gothic daddjan "to suckle;" Old Swedish dia "suckle;" Old High German tila "female breast;" Old Irish denaim "I suck," dinu "lamb").
Also from the same Latin root come felare "to suck;" femina "woman" (*fe-mna-, literally "she who suckles"); felix "happy, auspicious, fruitful;" fetus "offspring, pregnancy;" fenum "hay" (probably literally "produce"); and probably filia/filius "daughter/son," assimilated from *felios, originally "a suckling."
fecund
(fē′kənd, fĕk′ənd)- Capable of producing offspring; fertile.