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conclusions which have greater or less degrees of force, and which may be strengthened or weakened by subsequent experience and experiment. It relates to actual existences, as in physical science or the concerns of life. Logical induction is founded on the necessary laws of thought; philosophical induction, on the inte…

To make foolish; to affect with folly; to weaken the intellectual powers of, or to deprive of sound judgment. The judgment of God will be very visible in infatuating a people . . . ripe and prepared for destruction. Clarendon.

To weaken; to enfeeble. [Obs.] Sir W. Raleigh.

Weakening; annulling, or tending to make void. [Obs.]

To render invalid; to weaken or lessen the force of; to destroy the authority of; to render of no force or effect; to overthrow; as, to invalidate an agreement or argument.

The act of labefying or making weak; the state of being weakened; decay; ruin. There is in it such a labefaction of all principles as may be injurious to morality. Johnson.

To weaken or impair. [R.]

m heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning ! how art thou cut down to the ground which didst weaken the nations ! Is. xiv. 12. Tertullian and Gregory the Great understood this passage of Isaiah in reference to the fall of Satan; in consequence of which the name Lucifer has since been applied to, Satan. Kitto.…

trands a little twisted, used for winding around ropes and cables, to prevent their being weakened by fretting. Marline spike, Marling spike (Naut.), an iron tool tapering to a point, used to separate the strands of a rope in splicing and in marling. It has an eye in the thick end to which a lanyard is attached. See Fi…

sceptible to mild influences; sometimes, in a bad sense, to take away the firmness of; to weaken. Thou would'st have . . . melted down thy youth. Shak. For pity melts the mind to love. Dryden.

To suppress or weaken the force of; to extenuate; to palliate; to tell by degrees, instead of directly and frankly; to clip, as words or expressions; to utter half and keep back half of. I know no ways to mince it in love, but directly to say -- "I love you." Shak. Siren, now mince the sin, And mollify damnation with a…

Affected by a tremor, or by a nervous disease; weakened; overcome by some violent influence or sensation; shoked.

Worn out; weakened or exhausted by use; past usefulness; as, old shoes; old clothes.

To make vapid or insipid; to make lifeless or spiritless; to dull; to weaken. Chaucer. Reason and reflection . . . pall all his enjoyments. Atterbury.

and the setting up of an opposing electro-motive force, both of which tend materially to weaken the current of the battery, or that passing through the cell.

Free from that which harms, vitiates, weakens, or pollutes; genuine; real; perfect; -- applied to things and actions. "Pure religion and impartial laws." Tickell. "The pure, fine talk of Rome." Ascham. Such was the origin of a friendship as warm and pure as any that ancient or modern history records. Macaulay.…

To make unstable or infirm; to unsettle; to weaken. Ring out the grief that saps the mind. Tennyson.

Fig.: To move from firmness; to weaken the stability of; to cause to waver; to impair the resolution of. When his doctrines grew too strong to be shook by his enemies, they persecuted his reputation. Atterbury. Thy equal fear that my firm faith and love Can by his fraud be shaken or seduced. Milton.…

To impair; to weaken. [Obs.] Shak.

of those who, by their fallacious but plausible reasoning, puzzled inquirers after truth, weakened the faith of the people, and drew upon themselves general hatred and contempt. Many of the Sophists doubdtless card not for truth or morality, and merely professed to teach how to make the worse appear the better reason;…