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

The paradox is that trauma’s lingering impacts can enfeeble human connection, weakening even the strongest of social bonds.

From New York Times ● Jul. 5, 2022

Their goal is to blunt and enfeeble criticism and distract from its truthfulness.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 10, 2022

It will forever be the least dangerous branch, but that is no reason to enfeeble it further.

From Slate ● Oct. 11, 2018

They frequently enfeeble the constitution, and produce chronic inflammation of the liver, enlargement of the spleen, or terminate in jaundice or dropsy, and disorder the digestive organs.

From A New Guide for Emigrants to the West by John Mason Peck

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

This enfeebles and prostrates the parts that supply the blood and nervous fluid to the active organ.

From A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) by Calvin Cutter

The effects of the heat, moreover, are aggravated by the humidity of the atmosphere, so that it saps the vitality and enfeebles the stoutest constitution.

From The Outlook: Uncle Sam's Place and Prospects in International Politics by Newton Macmillan

Such protracted tension of the muscles enfeebles their action, and ultimately destroys their power of contraction.

From Popular Education For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes by Ira Mayhew

The one enfeebles the body, the other cripples the intellect, and aggravates envy, hatred, and malice.

From Ancient Faiths And Modern A Dissertation upon Worships, Legends and Divinities by Thomas Inman

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 empire carried on in an enfeebled state, but over the ensuing decades, Chang’an ceded much military and civil authority to provincial warlords.

From Textbooks ● Apr. 19, 2023

The tree was not only stripped by the cold season, it seemed weary from age, enfeebled, dry.

From "A Separate Peace" by John Knowles

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

These are things the Europeans agree need to be addressed, but not by enfeebling the nuclear deal which, they say, is crucial to their security.

From BBC ● Jan. 16, 2018

Lessing had been the first to break away from an enfeebling imitation of French Sentimentlalism.

From A Short History of Germany by Mary Platt Parmele