Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To sap the strength or energy of; enervate.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Weak; feeble.
  • To weaken; impair the strength of; enfeeble; make inactive or languid: as, intemperance debilitates the organs of digestion.
  • Synonyms To enervate, exhaust.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To impair the strength of; to weaken; to enfeeble.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To make feeble; to weaken.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb make weak

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin dēbilitāre, dēbilitāt-, from dēbilis, weak; see bel- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin debilitatus, past participle of debilitare ("to weaken, debilitate"), from the adjective debilis ("weak"), from de- + habilis ("able").

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