0 (of a living being) unable to produce young, or (of land) unable to produce plants or crops: --
1 completely clean and free from dirt and bacteria: --
The operation must be carried out under sterile conditions.
2 (of a person or animal) unable to produce young, or of land unable to produce plants or crops: --
It was a small oasis surrounded by sterile desert.
4 lacking in imagination, ideas, or enthusiasm: --
Suburban housing developments are often sterile environments.
A work so conceived can have no emotional power; it is bound to be dull and sterile.
Without this duplication, the mutant flies would be sterile.
The addition of a sterile compost activator (a source of inorganic nutrients) to the vermiculite and seed mix resulted in greatly increased germination (95.2%).
It remains to be assessed whether terminator varieties are, accidentally or otherwise, capable of rendering the seeds of (adjacent) non-terminator varieties also sterile.
Viability tests involved streaking of an aliquot of the suspension on sterile plates containing the appropriate nutrient medium for each species.
This requirement causes controversy, since it does not recognize various sterile organisms as being alive.
This implies that mules, workers ants, and other sterile individuals are not alive.
Climbers were identified to species or morphospecies using vegetative characteristics of sterile specimens collected or observed in the field.