Adjective: debile
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
Perifrastic
| Comparative | more debile |
| Superlative | most debile |
Sample Sentences
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So, then, it was no surprise to the ranchhold when the buckboard spun to the door, and Raidler took up his debile protégé like a handful of rags and set him down upon the gallery. [1903 February, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], “Hygeia at the Solito”, in Everybody’s Magazine, volume VIII, number 2, New York, N.Y.: John Wanamaker, →ISSN, page 174, column 1:]
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Being a little debile and unclear of mind he did not realize the risks he was running by passing all his nights in the same bed as the daughter, while he himself was suffering continually from a dammed-up sexual drive. [1935, Olof Kinberg, Basic Problems of Criminology, William Heinemann, page 181:]
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Cretins are debile, hard of hearing, and small in stature. [1979, E[rnst] Rudolf Froesch, translated by Terry Telger, “Endocrinology”, in Albert A[lois] Buehlmann, E[rnst] Rudolf Froesch, editors, Pathophysiology, New York, N.Y.: Springer-Verlag, →ISBN, page 202:]
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‘Debile’ patients suffered from moderate mental retardation or learning difficulty. [1999, Andrew Boyd, Baroness Cox: A Voice for the Voiceless, Lion, →ISBN, page 96:]
Adjectives inflected like debile
priest-ridden,
unreposed,
evadible,
dissentious,
dissentient,
unforesighted,
egocentrical,
unephemeral,
unennobling,
mensuralist,
flocculent,
unseductive,
whoopsy,
whooshy,
surrogate,
Nicodian,
unrepaired,
prismatoidal,
renorenal,
unseducible, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
Etymology
From Middle French débile (“weak”), from Latin dēbilis. See: Latin Adjectives '
dēbilis'.