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fecundity

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Latin fēcunditās (“fruitfulness, fertility”), from fēcundus, equivalent to fecund +‎ -ity.

Pronunciation

Noun

fecundity (usually uncountable, plural fecundities)

  1. Ability to produce offspring.
    • 2006, Neil Gaiman, “Neil Gaiman on Terry Pratchett”, in Good Omens, Corgi, page 410:
      In the early days the reviewers compared him to the late Douglas Adams, but then Terry went on to write books as enthusiastically as Douglas avoided writing them, and now, if there is any comparison to be made of anything from the formal rules of a Pratchett novel to the sheer prolific fecundity of the man, it might be to P. G. Wodehouse.
  2. Ability to cause growth or increase.
    • 1946, George Johnston, Skyscrapers in the Mist, page 52:
      [I]t would not be very much less absurd for someone to write about New York City after having spent only a few years or a few decades in this metropolis of inexhaustible adventure, of terrifying emotional fecundity, of uncapturable character.
  3. Number, rate, or capacity of offspring production.
    • 1889, Rudyard Kipling, “The Education of Otis Yeere”, in Under the Deodars, Boston: The Greenock Press, published 1899, page 29:
      The soil spawned humanity, as it bred frogs in the Rains, and the gap of the sickness of one season was filled to overflowing by the fecundity of the next.
  4. Rate of production of young by a female.

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