enervating
Britishadjective
Explanation
What do standing out in the cold rain, a pile of homework, and an emotional breakdown all have in common? They're enervating: in other words, they completely drain you of physical and emotional energy. A little different from similar words like debilitating or enfeebling, which primarily suggest physical fatigue; the wonderful enervating implies all that plus the terrible erosion of your soul. Not surprisingly, enervate is derived from the Latin enervatus, meaning "to weaken."
Vocabulary lists containing enervating
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
It gives the musical a rousing finish, but cannot erase the enervating effect of much of what has come before.
From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 10, 2025
Yet when he spoke following the haphazard 2-1 Europa League defeat on Thursday, there was a enervating familiarity about how the Rangers head coach explained away the outcome.
From BBC • Oct. 2, 2025
Rachel — despite her challenges with Celeste, her old lover David, her ailing ex-husband and her enervating work life — also discovers good things about her new life as her body changes.
From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 30, 2023
At other times, “Careless Crime” feels rather enervating, the film’s political charge and the pathos of its characters diffused by Mokri’s mathematical zeal.
From New York Times • Feb. 24, 2022
And so she appeased Tochi, putting America down, talking only about the things she, too, disliked about America, exaggerating her non-American accent, until the conversation became an enervating charade.
From "Americanah" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
