enervateverb [ T ]
uk/ˈen.ə.veɪt/us/ˈen.ɚ.veɪt/formalto make someone feel weak and without energy
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Becoming and making less strong
- abate
- adulterate
- attenuate
- attrition
- blow over
- blunt
- deflate
- dial
- dim
- emasculate
- jelly
- keep sb down
- knock/take the stuffing out of sb/sth idiom
- muffle
- neutralize
- pine
- sag
- sap
- shake
- wither on the vine idiom
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Examples from literature
- Even educational establishments are suspect on the ground—not unnatural after his own experience of Oxford—that their possibilities of comfort may enervate the natural energies of men.
- It enervated the people and left them powerless to cope with those enemies who, as soon as the iron hand of the Roman legions was removed, came forth from their hiding places to harry the land.
- Shun all that may enervate or diminish your youthful energies.
- The man in full possession of his mental qualities and corporeal strength is, in most cases, very different from that unfortunate being whose mind is, enervated by sufferings and whose body is weakened by wants.
- Their enjoyment seemed derived so directly from nature that it almost excited a feeling of regret that civilised men, enervated by luxury and all its concomitant diseases, should ever disturb the haunts of these rude but happy beings.