[f. as prec. + -NESS.] The state or quality of being feeble (in the various senses of the adj.); an instance of this.
a. 1300. Cursor M., 28679 (Cott.).
| Þis man … For-sakes penance neuer þe lese, | |
| And legges febulnes of flexse. |
c. 1340. Richard Rolle of Hampole, Prick of Conscience, 1514.
| Þe mare in malys and febelnes | |
| Þe kynd of ayther trobled es. |
1477. Earl Rivers (Caxton), Dictes, 134. Wrath cometh of feblenesse of courage.
1517. Torkington, Pilgr. (1884), 39. Our Savior … for very febylnesse fell … to the grounde.
1533. More, Debell. Salem, Pref. 7 b. The feblenesse of his answere shal appere.
1568. Grafton, Chron., II. 107. King Richarde walking unwisely aboute the Castell, to espie the feblenesse thereof.
1683. Burnet, trans. More’s Utopia (1684), 79. Women, for the most part, deal in Wool and Flax, which sute better with their feebleness, leaving the other ruder Trades to the Men.
1794. S. Williams, Vermont, 135–6. The strength, the fierceness, and the swiftness of the wild animals, the feebleness of the weapons, the bow, arrow, and club, with which the savage attacked them, joined to make the business of the hunter laborious and difficult.
1809–10. Coleridge, The Friend (1865), 190. It is feebleness only which cannot be generous without injustice, or just without ceasing to be generous.
1860. Gen. P. Thompson, Audi Alteram Partem, III. cxxv. 80. As the Working Classes are just now upon trial to see if they are not as wise or wiser than their neighbours, you will have done good if you prevent one of them from committing himself to the fashionable feeblenesses.
1884. L’pool Mercury, 22 Oct., 5/4. His grand defect lay in feebleness of will.
b. concr. (nonce-use).
1860. Geo. Eliot, Mill on Fl., III. 120. Ready to strike that daring feebleness from the stool.
