as in barren
producing inferior or only a small amount of vegetation
struggling to make a living with the region's unfertile fields
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Recent Examples of unfertile
Movies based on videogames, once unfertile IP for Hollywood at the box office, have blossomed in recent years.
—
Anthony D'alessandro, Deadline, 9 June 2025
Anthony D'alessandro, Deadline, 9 June 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for unfertile
Adjective
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In 2016, a team led by Su Yinquan, dean of forestry at Northwest A&F University, leased 14 hectares of barren Gobi land in Xinjiang to test whether Duzhong could survive and grow there.—
Bojan Stojkovski,
Interesting Engineering,
31 Jan. 2026
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The president cites national security concerns—despite existing approvals to expand militarily—and the potentially rich natural resources on the icy, largely barren territory.—
Jordan Blum,
Fortune,
21 Jan. 2026
Adjective
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Gibney illustrates that state of waiting, of staving off what at that time appears to be the inevitable, with the famous sequence from Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, in which Max von Sydow’s medieval knight plays chess with Death on a desolate beach.—
David Rooney,
HollywoodReporter,
25 Jan. 2026
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Tautly written, this first novel by a former criminal lawyer who spent 17 years in the Arctic is a hard look at the desolate lives of people resigned to life in the bleak far north.—
Sandra Dallas,
Denver Post,
24 Jan. 2026
Adjective
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Surely my imagination was not so impoverished?—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
29 Jan. 2026
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They are fascinated by this impoverished district of docks and shabby warehouses, associated in the popular imagination with Asian sailors, white slavery, and cholera.—
Hari Kunzru,
Harpers Magazine,
27 Jan. 2026
Adjective
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Evening people were 79% more likely to have poor overall heart health compared with those in the intermediate group, the study found.—
Dr. Joseph Wendt,
ABC News,
28 Jan. 2026
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Audits have identified poor planning, weak oversight, and insufficient monitoring of quality and cost.—
Walter Pavlo,
Forbes.com,
27 Jan. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Unfertile.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/unfertile. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.
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