Word.ws English Dictionary

efficious

efficious adjective: efficacious.

Adjective

efficious (comparative more efficious, superlative most efficious)

  1. (nonstandard, rare) Efficacious.
    • Had she not been cured at Oxford, no imputation could have fallen upon me, considering the circumstance of her pregnancy, and the virulence of the symptoms, for which I had used the most efficious remedies in the world.1770, The Memoirs of Miss Arabella Bolton. Containing a Genuine Account, page 81
    • This remedy will be found speedily efficious in hoarseness due to excessive action of the vocal cords or resulting from an acute cold.1899, The Carolina Medical Journal, volumes 43-44, page 207, quoting the Medical Standard

Forms of efficious

comparativemore efficious
superlativemost efficious

Origin of efficious

Possibly a variation of efficacious or derivative of efficacy influenced by analysis of the final -c- in the later word as being part of a suffix -cy rather than the word-stem.

Questions about efficious

What does efficious mean?
Efficious means efficacious.
What part of speech is efficious?
Efficious is an adjective.

Words near efficious in the dictionary

  1. efficient frontier
  2. efficient market hypothesis
  3. efficiently
  4. efficientness
  5. efficients
  6. efficious
  7. effictio
  8. effiction
  9. effictions
  10. Effie
  11. Effies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: efficious (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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