different between efficient vs purposive

English

Etymology

1398, “making,” from Old French, from Latin efficientem, nominative effici?ns, participle of efficere (“work out, accomplish”) (see effect). Meaning “productive, skilled” is from 1787. Efficiency apartment is first recorded 1930, American English.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /??f???nt/
• (US, Canada) IPA^(key): /??f???nt/
• Rhymes: -???nt

Adjective

efficient (comparative more efficient, superlative most efficient)

1. making good, thorough, or careful use of resources; not consuming extra. Especially, making good use of time or energy

2. expressing the proportion of consumed energy that was successfully used in a process; the ratio of useful output to total input

3. causing effects, producing results; bringing into being; initiating change (rare except in philosophical and legal expression efficient cause = causative factor or agent)

   • It was well said of Plotinus, that the stars were significant, but not efficient.

4. (proscribed, old use) effective
   • 1801, Robert Southey, Thalaba the Destroyer:

     Ye wake no more to anguish;? ye have borne
     The Chosen, the Destroyer!? soon his hand
     Shall strike the efficient blow;
     Soon shaking off your penal forms, shall ye,
     With songs of joy, amid the Eden groves,
     Hymn the Deliverer’s praise!

   • 1856, William Dexter Wilson, An Elementary Treatise on Logic

     The Efficient Cause is that from which emanates the force that produces the Effect

Usage notes

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary from 1913 still lists efficient and effective as synonyms, but all major dictionaries now show that these words now only have different meanings in careful use. Use of both for the other meaning is however widespread enough that Longman's Exam Dictionary, for example, finds it necessary to proscribe the use of one for the other with several examples at each entry and provides the following summary:

• efficient (“working quickly and without waste”)
• effective (“having the desired effect”)

Antonyms

• inefficient

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

Noun

efficient (plural efficients)

1. (obsolete) a cause; something that causes an effect
   • 1643, Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, I.14:

     Some are without efficient, as God; others without matter, as Angels […].

   • a. 1758, Jonathan Edwards, Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity

     This implies, that something happens without a cause. If it should be said, that motive in this case is not the efficient of the action or doing — this is granted; but at the same time, for reasons already given, it is denied, that the man himself is the efficient cause of it.

References

Danish

Adjective

efficient

1. This term needs a translation to English. Please help out and add a translation, then remove the text {{rfdef}}.

Inflection

Further reading

• “efficient” in Den Danske Ordbog

French

Etymology

From Latin effici?ns.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /e.fi.sj??/
• Homophone: efficients

Adjective

efficient (feminine singular efficiente, masculine plural efficients, feminine plural efficientes)

1. efficient
2. effective

Related terms

• efficience

Further reading

• “efficient” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Latin

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ef?fi.ki.ent/, [?f?f?ki?n?t?]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ef?fi.t??i.ent/, [?f?fi?t??i?n?t?]

Verb

efficient

1. third-person plural future active indicative of effici?

English

Etymology

From purpose +? -ive. Compare purpositive.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?p??p?s?v/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /?p?p?s?v/

Adjective

purposive (comparative more purposive, superlative most purposive)

1. Serving a particular purpose; adapted to a given purpose, especially through natural evolution. [from 19th c.]
   • 1918, Algernon Blackwood, The Garden of Survival, London: Macmillan, Chapter 9, p. 142,^[1]

     Irresistably it came to me again that beauty, far from being wasted, was purposive, that this purpose was of a redeeming kind, and that some one who was pleased co-operated with it for my personal benefit.

2. Done or performed with a conscious purpose or intent. [from 19th c.]

   Synonyms: deliberate, intentional, purposeful

   • 1949, George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, London: Secker & Warburg, “Appendix: The Principles of Newspeak,”^[2]

     It would have been quite impossible to use the A vocabulary for literary purposes or for political or philosophical discussion. It was intended only to express simple, purposive thoughts, usually involving concrete objects or physical actions.

   • 2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin 2003, p. 191:

     Other ecclesiastics [...] were similarly accepting of a space for purposive and beneficent human action and betterment in a disenchanted world.

3. (psychology) Pertaining to purpose, as reflected in behaviour or mental activity. [from 19th c.]
   • 1920, D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, London: Martin Secker, 1921, Chapter 29, p. 430,^[3]

     Ursula could not believe the air in her nostrils. It seemed conscious, malevolent, purposive in its intense murderous coldness.

   • 1964, C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image, Cambridge University Press, Chapter 5, p. 93,^[4]

     The question at once arises whether medieval thinkers really believed that what we now call inanimate objects were sentient and purposive.

4. Pertaining to or demonstrating purpose. [from 19th c.]
   • 1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society 2012, p. 78:

     The world was generally agreed to be a purposive one, responsive to the wishes of its Creator […].

5. Possessed of a firm purpose. [from 20th c.]

   Synonyms: determined, resolute

   • 1993, Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy, Boston: Little, Brown, Part One, 1.15, p. 45,^[5]

     Whenever she opened a scientific book and saw whole paragraphs of incomprehensible words and symbols, she felt a sense of wonder at the great territories of learning that lay beyond her—the sum of so many noble and purposive attempts to make objective sense of the world.

6. (grammar) Of a clause or conjunction: expressing purpose. [from 20th c.]
   • 2004, Olga Fischer et al., The Syntax of Early English, Cambridge University Press, Chapter 7, p. 212,

     Many scholars suggest that […] the increase in the use of the to-infinitive in Middle English took place at the expense of the bare infinitive (i.e. an infinitive without the marker to). […] due to the loss of verbal inflections, it became difficult to distinguish the infinitival form from other verbal forms. As a result […] to began to function as a mere marker of the infinitive, losing its original ‘purposive’ sense […]

Usage notes

• Objects: behavior, action, interpretation, sample, etc.

Derived terms

• purposively
• purposiveness
• purposivism
• purposivist
• purposivity

Related terms

• purposeful

Translations