Noun: foible
| Singular | foible |
| Plural | foibles |
Sample Sentences
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Try to look past his foibles and see the friendly fellow underneath.
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He knew that this was like the sudden impulse of a madman—incongruous even with his habitual foibles. [1871–1872, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter XV, in Middlemarch […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book II:]
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Marguerite Blakeney was, above all, a woman, with all a woman’s fascinating foibles, all a woman’s most lovable sins. [1905 January 12, Baroness Orczy [i.e., Emma Orczy], The Scarlet Pimpernel, popular edition, London: Greening & Co., published 20 March 1912, →OCLC:]
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They made up for the respect with which unconsciously they treated him by laughing at his foibles and lamenting his vices. [1915, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter XLV, in Of Human Bondage, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, →OCLC:]
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Final fillip in the Vice-President's study has been a boning up on Premier Khrushchev's favorite foible, proverbs. The bibulous Russian leader likes to throw out homely homilies in his speeches and conversations[…] [1959 July 24, “An Ounce of Prevention”, in Meriden Record, page 6:]
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Jesus is reverenced as the one man who has lived unspotted by the world, free from human foibles, able to redeem mankind by his example. [1932, William Floyd, The Mistakes of Jesus:]
Nouns inflected like foible
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
1640–50, from Early Modern French foible (“feeble”) (contemporary French faible). Doublet of feeble. See: French Nouns '
foible', French Nouns '
faible'.