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

I confess that a paternalism that enfeebles the character appears to me scarcely less destructive than a license that intoxicates.

From The Builders by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

A doubting conscience enfeebles a man’s spiritual vigour for work.

From The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle to the Hebrews by Thomas Charles Edwards

Not only does it hasten their decay to allow seeds to ripen, but materially enfeebles the entire plant.

From Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) A Magazine for the Young by Various

They tell us now that all is good; that evil is but blessing in disguise, that pain makes strong and virtuous men—makes character—while pleasure enfeebles and degrades.

From The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 4 (of 12) Dresden Edition?Lectures by Robert Green Ingersoll

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

His voice was a bit weak and his body enfeebled, but he remained possessed of what a critic called an “infernal apostolic manner.”

From New York Times ● Dec. 21, 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

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

She now dropped, scarcely able to breathe from the oppression of the heat; or to sustain herself from the enfeebling effects of emptiness, joined to overpowering fatigue.

From The Wanderer (Volume 4 of 5) or, Female Difficulties by Fanny Burney