enfeeble

Partisanship, the first president observed, “serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 3, 2026

In a letter to Dr. Gabadadze and other deans, they wrote that they worried about setting “a precedent, completely lacking in due process, that could undermine faculty freedoms and correspondingly enfeeble proven pedagogic practices.”

From New York Times ● Oct. 3, 2022

How, in other words, fear and neglect, rather than the waywardness Vogel rails against, are what really enfeeble the mind.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 26, 2022

Abood held fast for several decades in the face of a well-funded movement to reverse the decision and enfeeble public sector unions.

From Slate ● Dec. 7, 2017

In the impassioned individual, inordinate love or hate may enfeeble thought; deep and persistent thought may dwarf the affections.

From Body, Parentage and Character in History Notes on the Tudor Period by Furneaux Jordan

But knowing the hallmarks of classic style will make anyone a better writer, and it is the strongest cure I know for the disease that enfeebles academic, bureaucratic, corporate, legal, and official prose.

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker

Pope availed himself of the false construction with a freedom which seriously deforms and enfeebles much of his poetry.

From The Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 1 New Edition by Alexander Pope

This keen and continual operation enfeebles you, because it consumes so rapidly the more sensible and marked operations of the soul.

From Letters of Madam Guyon by Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon

A great deal of wealth and success is the cause of luxury that enfeebles, loss of calm, quiet happiness, loss of love, leaving only the flattery that captivates.

From Gold Dust A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life by E. L. E. B.

No sorrow for the past, no gloomy foreboding of the future, no remorse, disappointment, nor anxiety depresses the spirits and enfeebles the vital powers.

From The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases by Charles West

She has traveled to Kyiv aiming to set up partnerships between enfeebled German automobile and machine makers—industries that currently shed 15,000 specialist jobs a month—and Ukrainian arms companies.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 2, 2026

She engenders compassion as Elisabeth grapples with her aging body, and a scene where she is enfeebled and struggles to get out of a chair is both achingly painful and achingly funny.

From Salon ● Sep. 20, 2024

Added to this, Congress, which governed India for decades, looks enfeebled and in decline.

From BBC ● Apr. 22, 2024

The attacks by the Mossi and Tuareg squeezed the enfeebled Malian Empire from the north and east.

From Textbooks ● Dec. 14, 2022

Capitalizing on Mantell’s enfeebled state, Owen set about systematically expunging Mantell’s contributions from the record, renaming species that Mantell had named years before and claiming credit for their discovery for himself.

From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson

His balding head’s scraggly hair—in contrast to the wigs worn by just about every Frenchman at the time, no matter the social class—is both ennobling and a bit enfeebling, like an aging but distinguished mane.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026

They fear that the enfeebling of the judiciary will compromise the rule of law and make the economy unattractive for investment.

From Seattle Times ● Jul. 26, 2023

It’s an image that evokes an enfeebling combination of envy and rage, as it becomes increasingly clear that the botters are perpetually one step ahead of our mere keyboards and mouses.

From The Verge ● May 25, 2022

That is, what if books by Coelho, Mitch Albom and others don’t satisfy a market so much as create it, enfeebling their readers while purporting to strengthen them with revelations?

From Washington Post ● Nov. 11, 2020

But now they are weary and faint, like those of some sickly dweller in cities--of some slave of effeminate and enfeebling luxury.

From The Gipsy (Vols I & II) A Tale by G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James