Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive verb To deprive of strength; make feeble.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To make feeble; deprive of strength; reduce the strength or force of; weaken; debilitate; enervate: as, intemperance enfeebles the body; long wars enfeeble a state.
- Synonyms See list under
enervate .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To make feeble; to deprive of strength; to reduce the strength or force of; to weaken; to debilitate.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb transitive To make
feeble .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb make weak
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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All available evidence suggests that long bouts of unemployment — particularly male unemployment — still enfeeble the jobless and warp their families to a similar degree, and in many of the same ways.
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All available evidence suggests that long bouts of unemployment — particularly male unemployment — still enfeeble the jobless and warp their families to a similar degree, and in many of the same ways.
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It has failed to do so because, among other things, its restless campaign to enfeeble the African state and its role in the economy has not succeeded in overcoming the environment of unproductive and pervasive rent seeking, he said.
African Ministers Mull Government’s Role in Development 2011
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It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration.
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Where the people are Catholic and submissive to the law of God, as declared and applied by the vicar of Christ and supreme pastor of the church, democracy may be a good form of government; but combined with Protestantism or infidelity in the people, its inevitable tendency is to lower the standard of morality, to enfeeble intellect, to abase character, and to retard civilization, as even our short American experience amply proves.
GOP Confronts Its Future Viability John 2009
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And it would enfeeble the Democratic Party for a generation.
Matthew Yglesias » The Real Story on Bankster Political Influence 2009
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It has failed to do so because, among other things, its restless campaign to enfeeble the African state and its role in the economy has not succeeded in overcoming the environment of unproductive and pervasive rent seeking, he said.
African Ministers Mull Government’s Role in Development 2011
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It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration.
Think Progress » Wall Street Republicans Form ‘Action Tank’ To Push Corporate Agenda 2010
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Where the people are Catholic and submissive to the law of God, as declared and applied by the vicar of Christ and supreme pastor of the church, democracy may be a good form of government; but combined with Protestantism or infidelity in the people, its inevitable tendency is to lower the standard of morality, to enfeeble intellect, to abase character, and to retard civilization, as even our short American experience amply proves.
Found While Looking for Something Else John 2009
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Japan and the U.K. The spending cuts and tax hikes they will be forced to impose will impair growth and enfeeble currencies.
john commented on the word enfeeble
Mr. Bigsby, the sympathetic biographer, does give a strong taste of Miller’s critics. More than a few saw his work as programmatic. Mary McCarthy, for one, wrote that “Death of a Salesman” was “enfeebled” by Miller’s “insistence on universality.”
The New York Times, Some Like It Hot, Some Like It Literary: A Playwright’s Life, With Marilyn, by Dwight Garner, June 2, 2009
June 3, 2009