Inefficient means wasting time, money or effort. An inefficient system, inefficient use of fuel, hopelessly inefficient.
It says the result was achieved with more input than needed, which is a different charge from ineffective — an inefficient process still works. In engineering it is measured: efficiency is useful output over total input, and nothing reaches one hundred per cent. Note efficient, from the Latin for accomplishing.
1adjectiveinefficientWasting time, money or effort.
“The old heating system was so inefficient that most of the heat escaped through the walls.”
inefficient is a quality of waste.
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰeh₁-
Latin
efficientem
English
efficient
English, today
inefficient
Built from
From in- + efficient. efficient 1398, “making,” from Old French -, from Latin efficientem, nominative efficiēns, participle of efficere (“work out, accomplish”) (see effect). Meaning “productive, skilled” is from 1787. Efficiency apartment is first recorded 1930, American English.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA