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r condition of being impotent; want of strength or power, animal, intellectual, or moral; weakness; feebleness; inability; imbecility. Some were poor by impotency of nature; as young fatherless children, old decrepit persons, idiots, and cripples. Hayward. O, impotence of mind in body strong! Milton.…

Lack of power; inability. Bacon. Their own impuissance and weakness. Holland.

ss; variableness. Mutability of temper, and inconsistency with ourselves, is the greatest weakness of human nature. Addison.

The state of being infirm; feebleness; an imperfection or weakness; esp., an unsound, unhealthy, or debilitated state; a disease; a malady; as, infirmity of body or mind. 'T is the infirmity of his age. Shak.

Simplicity or plainness, bordering on weakness or silliness; artlessness; ingenuousness. Chaucer. Shak.

Want of solidity; weakness; as, the insolidity of an argument. [R.] Dr. H. More.

Promoting or indicating weakness or heaviness; as, a languid day. Feebly she laugheth in the languid moon. Keats. Their idleness, aimless and languid airs. W. Black.

Softness; effeminacy; weakness. [R.]

d vends medicines which he pretends are infalliable remedies; a quack doctor. Such is the weakness and easy credulity of men, that a mountebank ... is preferred before an able physician. Whitlock.

without error; mature; whole; pure; sound; right; correct. My strength is made perfect in weakness. 2 Cor. xii. 9. Three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun. Shak. I fear I am not in my perfect mind. Shak. O most entire perfect sacrifice! Keble. God made thee perfect, not immutable. Milton.

trol the will of; to fill; to affect; -- said especially of evil spirits, passions, etc. "Weakness possesseth me." Shak. Those which were possessed with devils. Matt. iv. 24. For ten inspired, ten thousand are possessed. Roscommon.

o any other religious scheme. Addison. Painful preëminence! yourself to view Above life's weakness, and its comforts too. Pope. Beneath the forehead's walled preëminence. Lowell.

The quality of being pusillanimous; weakness of spirit; cowardliness. The badge of pusillanimity and cowardice. Shak. It is obvious to distinguished between an act of . . . pusillanimity and an act of great modesty or humility. South.

Evincing, or characterized by, weakness of mind, and want of courage; feeble; as, pusillanimous counsels. "A low and pusillanimous spirit." Burke.

Restoration from sickness, weakness, faintness, or the like; restoration from a condition of mistortune, of fright, etc.

from, or characteristic of, old age; affected with the infirmities of old age; as, senile weakness. "Senile maturity of judgment." Boyle. Senile gangrene (Med.), a form of gangrene occuring particularly in old people, and caused usually by insufficient blood supply due to degeneration of the walls of the smaller arteri…

Pertaining to sex. [R.] Should I ascribe any of these things unto myself or my sexly weakness, I were not worthy to live. Queen Elizabeth.

Fig.: Effeminacy; weakness. [R.] B. Jonson.

Proceeding from want of understanding or common judgment; characterized by weakness or folly; unwise; absurd; stupid; as, silly conduct; a silly question.

Weakness of intellect; silliness; folly. How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity and the scorners delight in their scorning Prov. i. 22.