The quarantine will last as long as it takes so that Argentinians stay alive and well, the rest are sterile debates.

I cannot get pregnant. I am sterile.

The patient is sterile.

I'm sterile.

Mules are sterile.

Here he saw a pool of water, clear to its very depths. There were no marsh reeds round it, no sterile sedge, no spikes of rushes: it was crystal liquid. The edges of the pool were bordered by fresh turf, and the grass was always green.

His country is censored the world over, so that outsiders would not see the industrial pollution and the huge sterile apartment blocks therein.

Mars is a sterile frozen world.