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

For this reason, they use every means in their power to preserve the friendship of the Mongol princes, and to enfeeble the strength of these terrible nomads. 

From Travels in Tartary, Thibet, and China During the years 1844-5-6. Volume 1 [of 2] by Evariste Regis Huc

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

Pope availed himself of the false construction with a freedom which seriously deforms and enfeebles much of his poetry.

From The Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 1 New Edition by Alexander Pope

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

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

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 Furneaux Jordan

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

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

That is, what if books by Coelho, Mitch Albom and others don’t satisfy a market so much as create it, enfeebling their readers while purporting to strengthen them with revelations?

From Washington Post ● Nov. 11, 2020

One thing in your sturdy creed makes it omnipotent—the utter absence of such an enfeebling thought as that this life was meant to be a pleasure-house.

From Was It Right to Forgive? A Domestic Romance by Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr