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

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

If we try to teach speech too early and really succeed in fixing the child’s attention upon its tongue, we enfeeble its power of utterance.

From The Teacher Essays and Addresses on Education by Palmer, Alice Freeman

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 long-continued tension of a muscle enfeebles its action, and eventually destroys its contractility.

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

It is rather red tape, and not the occasional snapping of red tape which enfeebles liberty.

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

It impairs the functions of the brain, clouds the understanding, and enfeebles the memory.”—Dr.

From The Gospel Day Or, the Light of Christianity by Orr, Charles Ebert

He was not of those whose Christian liberality slackens and enfeebles devotion to their own communion.

From Charles Lewis Cocke Founder of Hollins College by Smith, William Robert Lee

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

A form was near—what form, the pitch-dark night and my enfeebled vision prevented me from distinguishing.

From "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë

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 Buchanan, Joseph R. (Joseph Rodes)