Feeble means so weak that it is sad to watch. A feeble grip on the handrail, a feeble knock at the door, a torch giving off feeble yellow light as the battery dies.
Feeble goes past weak by adding pity, which is why it is not a word you say to somebody's face. It reaches beyond bodies into anything that fails to convince: a feeble excuse, a feeble joke, a feeble attempt at an apology, feeble applause at the end of a speech. The noun is feebleness and the adverb is feebly — he smiled feebly and said nothing. Feeble-minded is an old and offensive term for a person with a learning disability; leave it where you found it. And mind the spelling: feeble, with -ble, not 'feable'.
1adjectivefeebleWeak, with very little physical strength.
“Her grandfather's voice was feeble but perfectly clear.”
2adjectiveconvinceToo weak to convince anyone; lacking force or effect.
“He made a feeble excuse about the traffic and sat down.”
Also accepted in games: frail
Latin flēbilis meant tearful, mournful, to be wept over, and came from fleō, 'to weep'. The sounds shifted on the way through Anglo-Norman feble, and the sense shifted with them, from pitiable to plain weak. The pity never quite left: a feeble handshake is still a slightly sad thing. Foible, the word for a small personal weakness, is the same Latin word arriving by a different road.
Middle English
feble
English, today
feeble
Built from
From Middle English feble. From Middle English feble, from Anglo-Norman feble (“weak, feeble”) (compare French faible), from Latin flēbilis (“tearful, mournful, lamentable”) by dissimilation, from fleō (“to weep, cry”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European bʰleh₁-. a doublet of foible.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Sharper Adjectives, A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 25 of A Man Called Ove.
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