fertility
Americannoun
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fertilities
plural
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the state or quality of being fertile.
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Biology. the ability to produce offspring; power of reproduction.
the amazing fertility of rabbits.
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the birthrate of a population.
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(of soil) the capacity to supply nutrients in proper amounts for plant growth when other factors are favorable.
noun
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the ability to produce offspring, esp abundantly
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the state or quality of being fertile
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of fertility
1375–1425; late Middle English fertilite (< Middle French ) < Latin fertilitās. See fertile, -ity
Explanation
Fertility is the ability to have babies or to reproduce. When fertility rates in a community increase, more babies are born. Fertility is the quality of a human's ability to produce offspring, which is dependent on age, health, and other factors. The noun can also refer to the state of a plant or animal's being capable of reproduction. When you hear about "fertility rates," it means the number of births that happen during a certain time period in a specific location. The Latin root word is fertilis, "bearing in abundance or fruitful," from ferre, "to bear."
Vocabulary lists containing fertility
Bless Me, Ultima
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Content Summary G.3: Spatial Reorganization
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American Street
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The other possibility is that the rise in living with parents is somehow a cause, not a side effect, of declining marriage and fertility.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 22, 2026
Its three plexiglass vaults hold ghostly symbols of procreation: an irradiated vortex, the fertility goddess Hera, a DNA spiral.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 19, 2026
“My husband was better at the waiting, but he hadn’t spent the last 12 years circling the fertility drain,” she wrote in the Vogue piece.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 16, 2026
Young men often don’t know their fertility status and might have a low sperm count to begin with.
From Slate ● Sep. 13, 2026
In bad times puberty is late and fertility decreases.
From "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari
Among a people who look to music and song as a source of enjoyment, the habit of improvisation grows up imperceptibly, and engages all the fertilities of imagination in its exercise.
From Servian Popular Poetry by John Bowring
Now did Pedgift Junior shine brighter than ever he had shone yet in gems of caustic humor and exquisite fertilities of resource.
From Armadale by Wilkie Collins
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
