adjective
- producing or capable of producing offspring, fruit, vegetation, etc., in abundance; prolific; fruitful: fecund parents; fecund farmland.
- very productive or creative intellectually: the fecund years of the Italian Renaissance.
adjective
- greatly productive; fertile
- intellectually productive; prolific
early 15c., from Middle French fecond, from Latin fecundus “fruitful, fertile, productive,” from *fe-kwondo-, suffixed form of Latin root *fe-, corresponding to PIE *dhe(i)- “to suck, suckle,” also “produce, yield” (cf. Sanskrit dhayati “sucks,” dhayah “nourishing;” Greek thele “mother’s breast, nipple,” thelys “female, fruitful;” Old Church Slavonic dojiti “to suckle,” dojilica “nurse,” deti “child;” Lithuanian dele “leech;” Old Prussian dadan “milk;” Gothic daddjan “to suckle;” Old Swedish dia “suckle;” Old High German tila “female breast;” Old Irish denaim “I suck,” dinu “lamb”).
Also from the same Latin root come felare “to suck;” femina “woman” (*fe-mna-, literally “she who suckles”); felix “happy, auspicious, fruitful;” fetus “offspring, pregnancy;” fenum “hay” (probably literally “produce”); and probably filia/filius “daughter/son,” assimilated from *felios, originally “a suckling.”
adj.
- Capable of producing offspring; fertile.