forcible-feeble

adj

Etymology

From Francis Feeble, a character in William Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 2, to whom Falstaff derisively applies the epithet forcible.

Definitions

  1. Having a vigorous appearance, but in reality, weak or insipid.

    • He would purge his book of much offensive matter, if he struck out epithets which are in the bad taste of the forcible-feeble school.
    • But [allegory] is apt to spoil two good things—a story and a moral, a meaning and a form; and the taste for it is responsible for a large part of the forcible feeble writing that has been inflicted on the world.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for forcible-feeble. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA