debility

“The debility, dependency and dread doesn’t disappear when they walk into a clean room in suits,” said Steven M. Kleinman, who served in the C.I.A. and then the Air Force from 1983 to 2015 and retired as a colonel with a specialty in human intelligence.

A correspondence that spans years might have its intermittent sputters, but it finally ends for a reason, and often — as with nearly all of the pairs mentioned here — that reason is someone’s death or debility.

At 40, Baudelaire was a shadow of his former self, crushed by unrepayable debts, suffering the aftereffects of a seemingly minor stroke, and facing the onset of syphilitic debility.

Over and over, she finds language sufficient for her intense debility.

Rereading recently the Snopes and Studs Lonigan trilogies, I was struck by their insight into the emotional debility and ruthlessness of socially mobile men.