Prolific

How to spell prolific

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce prolific

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does prolific mean?

1. adjectiveProducing a great quantity of something, especially creative work or offspring.

Prolific in a sentence

• The prolific novelist published three books every year.

• Rabbits are famously prolific breeders in mild climates.

Where does prolific come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word reaches back to the Latin noun proles, meaning 'offspring' or 'children', combined with the verb facere, 'to make' or 'to produce'. From these came the Late Latin adjective prolificus, literally describing something that 'makes offspring', that is, something highly fertile. English took the word in the seventeenth century by way of the French prolifique, and at first it kept its strictly biological flavour, applied to plants and animals that bred or seeded abundantly. Over time the sense broadened from physical fertility to creative output, so that today a prolific author or composer is simply one who produces a great deal. The proles root quietly survives in the word 'proletariat', which originally named the lowest Roman class whose only contribution to the state was thought to be their children.

How the word is built

• proli- (from Latin proles: offspring)
• -fic (from facere: to make)
• -ic forms the adjective sense 'producing much'