Synonym Chooser

How is the word fecund distinct from other similar adjectives?

Some common synonyms of fecund are fertile, fruitful, and prolific. While all these words mean "producing or capable of producing offspring or fruit," fecund emphasizes abundance or rapidity in bearing fruit or offspring.

a fecund herd

When is it sensible to use fertile instead of fecund?

The synonyms fertile and fecund are sometimes interchangeable, but fertile implies the power to reproduce in kind or to assist in reproduction and growth; applied figuratively, it suggests readiness of invention and development.

fertile soil
a fertile imagination

How does the word fruitful relate to other synonyms for fecund?

Fruitful adds to fertile and fecund the implication of desirable or useful results.

fruitful research

When would prolific be a good substitute for fecund?

The words prolific and fecund can be used in similar contexts, but prolific stresses rapidity of spreading or multiplying by or as if by natural reproduction.

a prolific writer

Examples Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of fecund Older females were significantly less fecund than young mature females, and were not more fecund than subadult females. Seriously Science, Discover Magazine, 28 Feb. 2018 State officials say their own surveys put the figure at 0.89, a rate just above that of South Korea, the least fecund nation in the world. Sameer Yasir, New York Times, 29 May 2023 Sen worked in what was an extraordinarily fecund period for Bengali-language cinema, based in the eastern Indian film stronghold Calcutta (now Kolkata). Naman Ramachandran, Variety, 13 May 2023 There have been dozens more slamming the bureau for various transgressions, most of them figments of the fecund presidential imagination. Robert G. Kaiser, The New York Review of Books, 27 Feb. 2020 See all Example Sentences for fecund 

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Cite this Entry

“Fecund.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/fecund. Accessed 20 Jan. 2025.

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