enervating

English

Verb

enervating

1. present participle and gerund of enervate

Adjective

enervating (comparative more enervating, superlative most enervating)

1. That enervates.
   • 1827, Lydia Sigourney, Poems, Grave of the Mother of Washington, page 10:

     No enervating arts refined
     To slumber lull'd his heaven-born might;
     No weak indulgence warp'd thy mind,
     To cloud a hero's path of light.

   • 1828, [Edward Bulwer-Lytton], chapter XX, in Pelham; or, The Adventures of a Gentleman. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 196:

     I rose by candle-light, and consumed, in the intensest application, the hours which every other individual of our party wasted in enervating slumbers, from the hesternal dissipation or debauch.

   • 1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter III (Accessory After the Fact), page 382, column 1:

     Turning back, then, toward the basement staircase, she began to grope her way through blinding darkness, but had taken only a few uncertain steps when, of a sudden, she stopped short and for a little stood like a stricken thing, quite motionless save that she quaked to her very marrow in the grasp of a great and enervating fear.

Anagrams

• venerating