unproductive

English

Etymology

From un- +‎ productive.

Pronunciation

• Audio (US):

  (file)

Adjective

unproductive (comparative more unproductive, superlative most unproductive)

1. Not productive; useless; fruitless.

   Juggling is an amusing pastime, but generally unproductive.

2. (linguistics, of affixes, mechanisms of word formation, etc) No longer used to produce new words (see examples).

Usage notes

• unproductive is much more common than nonproductive.

Synonyms

• nonproductive
• unyieldly

Derived terms

• unproductive time

Translations

not productive

• Catalan: improductiu
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 無生產的／无生产的 (wúshēngchǎn de)

• Czech: neproduktivní
• Dutch: onproductief (nl), improductief (nl)
• Finnish: tuottamaton (fi)
• French: improductif (fr)
• German: unproduktiv
• Hungarian: terméketlen (hu), improduktív (hu), gyümölcstelen (hu), meddő (hu), szaporátlan (hu)
• Japanese: 非生産的 (hiseisanteki)
• Maori: whiro (refers especially to soils), mūhore, tītōhea (of soil), pūweku (of crops), pūeku (of crops)
• Plautdietsch: fruchtlooss
• Polish: bezproduktywny (pl), nieproduktywny
• Portuguese: improdutivo (pt)
• Romanian: neproductiv (ro), nefructuos (ro)
• Russian: непродукти́вный (ru) (neproduktívnyj), непроизводи́тельный (ru) (neproizvodítelʹnyj)

Further reading

• “unproductive”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “unproductive”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• unproductive, nonproductive at the Google Books Ngram Viewer.