Word Finder - weakness

definition

The condition of being weak.

example

In a small number of horses, muscle weakness may progress to paralysis.

definition

An inadequate quality; fault

example

His inability to speak in front of an audience was his weakness.

definition

A special fondness or desire.

example

She is an athlete who has a weakness for chocolate.

The memory of her weakness for him was all too fresh.

At the first sight of weakness, her cause would be lost.

Weakness in neighbors is regarded as an opportunity for conquest or, at least, coercion.

But even then, at moments of weakness as he had accounted them, his mind had penetrated to those distances and he had there seen the same pettiness, worldliness, and senselessness.

Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.

It was difficult to believe that Connie would tell Allen, knowing his weakness for alcohol, but how else would he have known?

Your pity is a weakness.

She sensed weakness and dwelled on the instinct for a moment.

Castruccio dominated Tuscany, where the Guelph cause, in the weakness of King Robert, languished.

Maybe I was more interested in detailing your human weakness than in understanding what your instincts told you.

She hung up, sick of him and her weakness.

She'd figure out his weakness and hold onto that knowledge for when she needed it.

It showed weakness, but it added nothing to whatever immorality there might be in successively taking two incompatible oaths.

This weakness was the worst blot on Cranmer's character, but it was due in some measure to his painful capacity for seeing both sides of a question at the same time, a temperament fatal to martyrdom.

She held herself as erect, told everyone her opinion as candidly, loudly, and bluntly as ever, and her whole bearing seemed a reproach to others for any weakness, passion, or temptation--the possibility of which she did not admit.

When the service was over, Kutuzov stepped up to the icon, sank heavily to his knees, bowed to the ground, and for a long time tried vainly to rise, but could not do so on account of his weakness and weight.

A strange feeling of weakness tied him to the spot; he wished to get up and go away, but could not do so.

He'd seen from burying his brother that a king's greatest weakness was the woman at his side.

He suffered from infancy from great fragility of health, and nearly died in 1858 of gastric fever, which left much constitutional weakness behind it.

Everyone spoke loudly of the field marshal's great weakness and failing health.

The king's consciousness of his weakness was combined with a sense of duty, and it was upon these two.

This, together with the weakness due to military reforms but recently begun, drove him to rely on foreign aid; which, in the actual conditions of Europe, meant the aid of Russia.

The relative weakness of territorial power in the North, after the fall of Henry the Lion of Saxony, diminished without however removing this motive for union, but the comparative immunity from princely aggression on land left the towns freer to combine in a stronger and more permanent union for the defence of their commerce by sea and for the control of the Baltic.

The long Balkan troubles of 1908-12, which originated in Count Aehrenthal's exploitation of Russia's transitory weakness, called for great care, especially during the crisis of 1908-9, which laid bare Russian impotence.

Under the Byzantine dominion Pisa, like many other of the maritime cities of Italy, profited by the weakness of the government at Constantinople to reassert its strength.

Spent with weakness and fatigue he asked leave to rest his head on his companion's lap, and quickly fell into a quiet sleep. As Niccolini tells us, the martyr's face became serene and smiling as a child's.

This mental attitude, combined with a certain lack of initiative and the weakness of his health, probably prevented him from doing full justice to his splendid powers of experimental research.

In cases of myopia or short-sight owing to weakness of the internal recti muscles, the eyes in looking at a near object, instead of converging, tend to turn outwards, and so double vision results.

Soon after entering his eightyfourth year, however, symptoms of weakness set in, and early in September his condition began to give alarm.

Further divisions followed, and the weakness caused by these partitions was accentuated by a rivalry between the two main branches of the family.

We know him in the intense liveliness of his feeling and the human weakness of his nature more intimately than any other writer of antiquity, except perhaps Cicero.

In controversy he was too fond of mingling personal abuse with legitimate argument, and this weakness mars his letters, which were held in high admiration in the early middle ages, and are valuable for their history of the man and his times.

The new king of Scots, David, who was his brother-in-law, was a mere boy, and the Scottish barons, exiled for their support of Robert Bruce, took advantage of the weakness of his rule to invade Scotland in 1332.

Alvensleben himself, riding on the field track to screen his own weakness by a vigorous attack.

An ordinary commander would have avoided fighting altogether, but Marlborough saw beyond the material conditions and risked all on his estimate of the moral superiority of his army and of the weakness of the French leading.

Subsequently Greek mercenaries became indispensable not only to the king but also to the satraps, who thereby gained the means for attempting successful rebellions, into which they were provoked by the weakness of the king, and by the continuous intrigues between the Persian magnates.

The Dutch admiral, who was hampered rather than helped by his Spanish allies, did his best to make good his weakness by skilful management.

What is most remarkable in it is his concentrated effort to realize the exact political weight of the German nation, and to penetrate the causes of its strength and weakness.

Somewhere, in actual life, the stress of craft and courage acting on the springs of human vice and weakness fails, unless the hero of the comedy or tragedy, Callimaco or Cesare, allows for the revolt of healthier instincts.

In spite of his own wonderful genius the seeds of weakness were sown in his lifetime.

Nevertheless, during the later years of his father's reign the weakness of the king and the declining health of the Black Prince threw the government very much into his hands.

In the 10th century the royal line had been superseded by a dynasty of Falasha Jews, followed by other Christian families; but weakness and disorder continued till the restoration of the "House of Solomon" (c. 1268).

After the annexation of the Punjab the valley was administered by Herbert Edwardes so thoroughly that it became a source of strength instead of weakness during the Mutiny.

Talleyrand, despite the weakness of his own position (he was as yet little more than the chief clerk of his department), soon came to a good understanding with the general, and secretly expressed to him his satisfaction at the terms which the latter dictated at Campo Formio (17th of October 1797).

Of the remainder many were far from enthusiastic in the cause for which they had perforce to take up arms, and might prove a source of weakness should victory incline to the French eagles.

But there were lines of weakness, too, in his army.

The detachment was quickly forced to retire on its supports at the cross-roads, but here Prince Bernard firmly held his position; and by his skilful use of cover and the high standing corn he prevented the French gauging the weakness of the small force that barred their way.

The fear of disclosing to the enemies of England the weakness of the country in fighting-material was one of the main objections offered to the proposal.

Their weakness as a denomination has lain latterly in their very catholicity of sympathy.

Therefore, in response to their repeated complaints of the weakness of the English arising from disunion, Governor Fletcher, in 1694, called another intercolonial conference consisting of delegates from New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey, and urged the necessity of more united feelings.