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

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

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 10, 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

It is being unfaithful to the soul to enfeeble its servant; it is being much more unfaithful to it still, to enslave it to its servant.

From Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good by Victor Cousin

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

The pressure of tight dresses, under the name of a “snug fit,” enfeebles the muscles of the back, and is a common cause of projecting shoulders and curvature of the spinal column.

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

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.

The former Red Army is in an enfeebled state.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 16, 2025

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

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

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

Thus the vertical line separates the indolent from the energetic basilar functions, and all the enfeebling, sensitive, morbid faculties that impair our energies are in the anterior basilar region.

From Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 Volume 1, Number 11 by Joseph R. (Joseph Rodes) Buchanan