Fecundity

Definition: producing or capable of producing offspring; prolific

Why I Looked It Up

I encountered the word in the novel Cutting for Stone.

Their gazes were flat […] noting the gap between her first and second toe which everyone knows is the only reliable gauge of fecundity.

In this context, it means when a woman has reached child-bearing age (or, given the wording here, when she is capable of having sex).

I also found at roughly the same time in Extra Life in relation to the productivity of soil:

In the right circumstances, it could be capable of staggering fecundity…

Why I Looked It Up

I didn’t note the book, but I have a picture of a book page which reads:

Our essential role is to produce ever more sophisticated tools – to “fecundate” machines as bees fecundate plants – until technology has developed the capacity to reproduce itself on its own.

(I wish I remembered the book, because this is a very depressing thought.)