flabile

English

Etymology

Latin flabilis.

Adjective

flabile (comparative more flabile, superlative most flabile)

1. (obsolete) Liable to be blown about; pertaining to wind or breath.
   • 1728, Roger North, Hilda Andrews, The Musicall Gramarian, page 6:

     In the then earlyer times , the comon country musick was ordinarily of the flabile kind

   • 1804 February, W.K., “To the Editor”, in The European Magazine and London Review, volume 45, page 86:

     My spirits a drear pensiveness depress'd, And deep-drawn sighs incessant heav'd my breast. Alas ! in sick'ning semblance did I trace The gloomy fall of our own flabile race.

   • 1858, City of Winona and Southern Minnesota, page 11:

     Having lain out on the ground all night, our chief concern (now that we had got rid of our red intruders,) was to provide more comfortable lodgings for the following night, which we were enabled to do by rigging up a commodious tent of canvass in our possession, and which answered a temporary purpose, until a thunder gust lifted the fabric from its stake-tied foundation, impressed us with the necessity of providing shelters of more storm-resisting material than our flabile and fluttering canvass afforded.

   • 1889, Marcus Tullius Cicero, Death No Bane: A New Translation, page 51:

     There is not even anything that is either humid or breathly (flabile), or igneous.

   • 1910, Albert G. Detch, “Much Hysteria Abroad in the Land”, in The Bridgemen's Magazine, volume 10, page 835:

     Millionaires are not much troubled with hyteria. They are a calm, flaccid, flabile, placid lot who pat themselves on the back on account of their marvelous poise of character, fat bank account and U.S. bonds.

Anagrams

• filable, fliable