EFFECTIVE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Effective

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/ɪfˈɛktɪv/ /ˈifɛktɪv/ Listen

adjective

Effective adj. Having the power to produce an effect or effects; producing a decided or decisive effect; efficient; serviceable; operative; as, an effective force, remedy, speech; the effective men in a regiment. "They are not effective of anything, nor leave no work behind them." "Whosoever is an effective, real cause of doing his heighbor wrong, is criminal."

Synonyms: Efficient; forcible; active; powerful; energetic; competent. See Effectual.

noun

Effective n.

That which produces a given effect; a cause.

One who is capable of active service. "He assembled his army 20,000 effectives at Corinth."

(Com.) Specie or coin, as distinguished from paper currency; a term used in many parts of Europe.

The serviceable soldiers in a country; an army or any military body, collectively; as, France's effective.

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Etymology of 'Effective'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Effective" Quotes from Famous Books

... was called a good fellow. It was not often that he told a story, but when he did, it was a good one, and it was clean. He had an inimitable way of telling anything, and his stories were all the more effective because they came at rare intervals. He did not cheapen them by making ...

— Frank Merriwell's Nobility - The Tragedy of the Ocean Tramp • Burt L. Standish (AKA Gilbert Patten)

... dramas. But these were little better than failures even at the time; and while "The Seasons" has outlived all changes of taste, and "The Castle of Indolence" has never wanted admirers, tragedies like "Agamemnon" and "Sophonisba" have been long forgotten. An imitation of Shakspere to any effective purpose must obviously have take the shape of a play; and neither Gray nor Collins nor Akenside, nor any of the group, was capable of a play. Inspiration of a kind, these early romanticists did draw from Shakspere. Verbal reminiscences of him abound ...

— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... conciseness is in evidence, which, however, is more effective than an excess of words. In the first place, he personifies a lifeless object when he attributes to blood a voice filling with its cries heaven and the earth. How can that voice be small or weak which, rising from earth, is heard by God in heaven? Abel, therefore, who when ...

— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... quality of Deronda's nature—that keenly perceptive sympathetic emotiveness which ran along with his speculative tendency—was never more thoroughly tested. He felt nothing that could be called belief in the validity of Mordecai's impressions concerning him or in the probability of any greatly effective issue: what he felt was a profound sensibility to a cry from the depths of another and accompanying that, the summons to be receptive instead of superciliously prejudging. Receptiveness is a rare and massive power, ...

— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... been uttered so effective in its immediate results as that of Mr. Bryan in the Democratic National Convention of 1896. The occasion was one never to be forgotten. When Mr. Bryan began his speech he had not been mentioned as a candidate for the Presidency; at its close ...

— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

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