Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Absent or diminished fertility.
  • noun The persistent inability to conceive a child.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The condition of being infertile; unproductiveness; barrenness: as, the infertility of land.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The state or quality of being infertile; unproductiveness; barrenness.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The condition of being infertile; of having poor fertility.
  • noun The inability to conceive children.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the state of being unable to produce offspring; in a woman it is an inability to conceive; in a man it is an inability to impregnate

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Finally, the HPV vaccine has been implicated in infertility because it contains polysorbate 80 as a stabilizer.

    Global Immunization: Vaccine Coverage is Variable 2010

  • The proposal that these embryos could be put at the disposal of infertile couples as a treatment for infertility is not ethically acceptable for the same reasons which make artificial heterologous procreation illicit as well as any form of surrogate motherhood; this practice would also lead to other problems of a medical, psychological and legal nature.

    The difficult issue of embryonic adoption 2008

  • The proposal that these embryos could be put at the disposal of infertile couples as a treatment for infertility is not ethically acceptable for the same reasons which make artificial heterologous procreation illicit as well as any form of surrogate motherhood; this practice would also lead to other problems of a medical, psychological and legal nature.

    Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog: 2008

  • I only know the pain infertility has caused in my heart ...

    Trinity 2007

  • Low cost or not, the word infertility will not be taken out of the dictionary any time soon.

    The Infertility Challenge 2008

  • The human race’s sudden, unexplained infertility is the device used to plunge the world into chaos, but it’s just a more aggressive extension of modern issues.

    Top 10 Movies of the Decade » Scene-Stealers 2009

  • My infertility is the trope throughout, and it's a subject rich with stories.

    Phoebe Potts: 'Good Eggs': A Comic About Infertility 2010

  • My infertility is the trope throughout, and it's a subject rich with stories.

    Phoebe Potts: 'Good Eggs': A Comic About Infertility Phoebe Potts 2010

  • For idiopathic infertility, that is, infertility of an unknown cause, your ultimate chance of success is often related to the duration of the infertility.

    A Baby at Last! Mark L. Fuerst 2010

  • Bennett, a doctor, knew that their local NHS trust would only provide donor sperm to couples with proven infertility – in other words, they had to have a go themselves before they could get help.

    Conceivable ideas: meet the modern sperm donor 2010

Comments

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  • The Musical that's Hard to Conceive

    November 2, 2007