Synonyms of fecund

fecund

adjective

ˈfe-kənd 

as in fertile

producing abundantly

the Franklin stove, bifocals, and the lightning rod are just a few of the inventions that we owe to the fecund creativity of Benjamin Franklin

Synonyms & Similar Words

• fertile
• prolific
• rich
• fruitful
• productive
• lush
• generative
• creative
• inventive
• luxuriant
• abundant
• producing
• generous
• plentiful
• cornucopian
• fructuous
• fat
• bountiful
• bearing
• yielding
• copious
• thriving
• liberal
• bursting
• original
• flourishing
• blooming
• plenteous
• teeming
• abounding
• swarming
• plenitudinous

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

• sterile
• barren
• dead
• infertile
• unproductive
• unfruitful
• unfertile
• sparse
• scanty
• meager
• scant
• spare
• meagre
• skimpy
• skimp

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

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of fecund

Others omit her altogether, capturing the natural realm unblemished by human presence, a fecund environment dotted with snakes and birds and fungi. —Ana Karina Zatarain, The New Yorker, 24 Feb. 2024

Granting all perturbation and backsliding, generous lives had been lived on that fecund soil, and a generous spirit inhered in it. —Marilynne Robinson, The New York Review of Books, 12 Oct. 2023

This also happened to be one of the most creatively fecund periods in the city’s history. —Ned Resnikoff, The New Republic, 2 Sep. 2023

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

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