weak
not strong; liable to yield, break, or collapse under pressure or strain; fragile; frail: a weak fortress; a weak spot in armor.
lacking in bodily strength or healthy vigor, as from age or sickness; feeble; infirm: a weak old man; weak eyes.
not having much political strength, governing power, or authority: a weak nation; a weak ruler.
lacking in force, potency, or efficacy; impotent, ineffectual, or inadequate: weak sunlight; a weak wind.
lacking in rhetorical or creative force or effectiveness: a weak reply to the charges; one of the author's weakest novels.
lacking in logical or legal force or soundness: a weak argument.
deficient in mental power, intelligence, or judgment: a weak mind.
not having much moral strength or firmness, resolution, or force of character: to prove weak under temptation; weak compliance.
deficient in amount, volume, loudness, intensity, etc.; faint; slight: a weak current of electricity; a weak pulse.
deficient, lacking, or poor in something specified: a hand weak in trumps; I'm weak in spelling.
deficient in the essential or usual properties or ingredients: weak tea.
unstressed, as a syllable, vowel, or word.
(of Germanic verbs) inflected with suffixes, without inherited change of the root vowel, as English work, worked, or having a preterit ending in a dental, as English bring, brought.
(of Germanic nouns and adjectives) inflected with endings originally appropriate to stems terminating in -n, as the adjective alte in German der alte Mann (“the old man”).
(of wheat or flour) having a low gluten content or having a poor quality of gluten.
Photography. thin; not dense.
Commerce. characterized by a decline in prices: The market was weak in the morning but rallied in the afternoon.
Origin of weak
1synonym study For weak
Other words for weak
| 1 | breakable, delicate |
| 2 | senile, sickly, unwell, invalid |
| 4 | ineffective |
| 6 | unsound, ineffective, inadequate, illogical, inconclusive, unsustained, unsatisfactory, lame, vague |
| 7 | unintelligent, simple, foolish, stupid, senseless, silly |
| 8 | vacillating, wavering, unstable, irresolute, fluctuating, undecided, weak-kneed |
| 9 | slender, slim, inconsiderable, flimsy, poor, trifling, trivial |
| 11 | wanting, short, lacking |
Opposites for weak
Other words from weak
- o·ver·weak, adjective
- o·ver·weak·ly, adverb
- o·ver·weak·ness, noun
Words Nearby weak
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
How to use weak in a sentence
He is too weak, too scared of the hatred he has stirred to put an end to it.
Trump to visit Kenosha on Tuesday, despite protests from local leaders | kdunn6 | September 1, 2020 | FortuneA meta-analysis of 426 studies found only weak effects of anti-bias training on both implicit and explicit biases.
Lowe’s has long been derided as a weaker version of its bigger rival Home Depot.
How Lowe’s CEO is overhauling its e-commerce to capitalize on the home projects boom | Phil Wahba | August 19, 2020 | FortuneThe idea became more plausible in the 1970s, after physicists discovered that massive particles carry the weak and strong forces.
Another victim of the weak advertising market, ViacomCBS reported a 27% decline in ad revenue in its second quarter.
How the world’s biggest media companies fared through the ongoing crisis in Q2 | Lara O'Reilly | August 12, 2020 | Digiday
They even released a (pretty damn weak) hip-hop song on SoundCloud recounting their antics.
Instead of being strong and resilient, bones become weak and brittle.
A lot of people think females are too weak for the job, but I know that all the men she worked with saw her as one of the guys.
The Mystery Death Of A Female Firefighter | Christopher Moraff | December 13, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTAlas, his soul is willing, but his flesh is weak and he whiffs.
After Torture Report, Our Moral Authority As a Nation Is Gone | Nick Gillespie | December 11, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTThe paperwork was spotless: he had died in transit, the conjunction of a weak heart and long trip.
First Impressions are usually vivid but the power to revive them is weak—a poor memory.
Assimilative Memory | Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)First Impressions are usually weak but the power to revive them is strong—still a poor memory.
Assimilative Memory | Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)But the nasty part of the whole thing was, that Haggard had won eleven thousand pounds from a weak-headed boy.
The Pit Town Coronet, Volume I (of 3) | Charles James WillsHe shut his fist and hit Butterface a weak but well intended right-hander on the nose.
The Giant of the North | R.M. BallantyneBut in her first rage Mrs. Charmington had been weak enough to let out that the prince had called young Mrs. Haggard "lovely."
The Pit Town Coronet, Volume I (of 3) | Charles James Wills
British Dictionary definitions for weak
/ (wiːk) /
lacking in physical or mental strength or force; frail or feeble
liable to yield, break, or give way: a weak link in a chain
lacking in resolution or firmness of character
lacking strength, power, or intensity: a weak voice
lacking strength in a particular part: a team weak in defence
not functioning as well as normal: weak eyes
easily upset: a weak stomach
lacking in conviction, persuasiveness, etc: a weak argument
lacking in political or strategic strength: a weak state
lacking the usual, full, or desirable strength of flavour: weak tea
grammar
denoting or belonging to a class of verbs, in certain languages including the Germanic languages, whose conjugation relies on inflectional endings rather than internal vowel gradation, as look, looks, looking, looked
belonging to any part-of-speech class, in any of various languages, whose inflections follow the more regular of two possible patterns: Compare strong (def. 13)
(of a syllable) not accented or stressed
(of a fuel-air mixture) containing a relatively low proportion of fuel: Compare rich (def. 13)
photog having low density or contrast; thin
(of an industry, market, currency, securities, etc) falling in price or characterized by falling prices
Origin of weak
1Derived forms of weak
- weakish, adjective
- weakishly, adverb
- weakishness, noun
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Other Idioms and Phrases with weak
In addition to the idioms beginning with weak
- weak as a kitten
- weak link
- weak moment, in a
also see:
- spirit is willing but the flesh is weak
The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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