weak

[week] /wik/
adjective, weaker, weakest.
1.
not strong; liable to yield, break, or collapse under pressure or strain; fragile; frail:
a weak fortress; a weak spot in armor.
2.
lacking in bodily strength or healthy vigor, as from age or sickness; feeble; infirm:
a weak old man; weak eyes.
3.
not having much political strength, governing power, or authority:
a weak nation; a weak ruler.
4.
lacking in force, potency, or efficacy; impotent, ineffectual, or inadequate:
weak sunlight; a weak wind.
5.
lacking in rhetorical or creative force or effectiveness:
a weak reply to the charges; one of the author's weakest novels.
6.
lacking in logical or legal force or soundness:
a weak argument.
7.
deficient in mental power, intelligence, or judgment:
a weak mind.
8.
not having much moral strength or firmness, resolution, or force of character:
to prove weak under temptation; weak compliance.
9.
deficient in amount, volume, loudness, intensity, etc.; faint; slight:
a weak current of electricity; a weak pulse.
10.
deficient, lacking, or poor in something specified:
a hand weak in trumps; I'm weak in spelling.
11.
deficient in the essential or usual properties or ingredients:
weak tea.
12.
unstressed, as a syllable, vowel, or word.
13.
(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.
14.
(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”).
15.
(of wheat or flour) having a low gluten content or having a poor quality of gluten.
16.
Photography. thin; not dense.
17.
Commerce. characterized by a decline in prices:
The market was weak in the morning but rallied in the afternoon.
Origin
1250-1300; Middle English weik < Old Norse veikr; cognate with Old English wāc, Dutch week, German weich; akin to Old English wīcan to yield, give way, Old Norse vīkja to move, turn, draw back, German weichen to yield
Related forms
overweak, adjective
overweakly, adverb
overweakness, noun
Synonyms
1. breakable, delicate. 2. senile, sickly, unwell, invalid. Weak, decrepit, feeble, weakly imply a lack of strength or of good health. Weak means not physically strong, because of extreme youth, old age, illness, etc.: weak after an attack of fever. Decrepit means old and broken in health to a marked degree: decrepit and barely able to walk. Feeble denotes much the same as weak, but connotes being pitiable or inferior: feeble and almost senile. Weakly suggests a long-standing sickly condition, a state of chronic bad health: A weakly child may become a strong adult. 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.
Antonyms
1. strong.
Examples from the web for weak
  • The shape of the magnet created a weak magnetic field surrounded by a strong magnetic field to confine the plasma.
  • These many weak interactions add up to strong adhesion over the area of the foot.
  • As precommitment devices go, however, the debt limit is both too weak and too strong.
  • For history does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.
  • Administrators who feel threatened by “strong” underlings hire weak persons to work beneath them.
  • Organizers also wanted to reduce the breadth of the games, with many events currently having small fields and weak competition.
  • But the concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear.
  • Measles are only dangerous to people with weak immune systems.
  • At that moment, I felt that my spirit and my soul had returned to my weak body.
  • Copies and scans are fast, but quality is weak.
British Dictionary definitions for weak

weak

/wiːk/
adjective
1.
lacking in physical or mental strength or force; frail or feeble
2.
liable to yield, break, or give way: a weak link in a chain
3.
lacking in resolution or firmness of character
4.
lacking strength, power, or intensity: a weak voice
5.
lacking strength in a particular part: a team weak in defence
6.
  1. not functioning as well as normal: weak eyes
  2. easily upset: a weak stomach
7.
lacking in conviction, persuasiveness, etc: a weak argument
8.
lacking in political or strategic strength: a weak state
9.
lacking the usual, full, or desirable strength of flavour: weak tea
10.
(grammar)
  1. 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
  2. belonging to any part-of-speech class, in any of various languages, whose inflections follow the more regular of two possible patterns Compare strong (sense 13)
11.
(of a syllable) not accented or stressed
12.
(of a fuel-air mixture) containing a relatively low proportion of fuel Compare rich (sense 13)
13.
(photog) having low density or contrast; thin
14.
(of an industry, market, currency, securities, etc) falling in price or characterized by falling prices
Derived Forms
weakish, adjective
weakishly, adverb
weakishness, noun
Word Origin
Old English wāc soft, miserable; related to Old Saxon wēk, Old High German weih, Old Norse veikr
Word Origin and History for weak
adj.

c.1300, from Old Norse veikr "weak," cognate with Old English wac "weak, pliant, soft," from Proto-Germanic *waikwaz "yield," *wikanan "bend" (cf. Old Saxon wek, Swedish vek, Middle Dutch weec, Dutch week "weak, soft, tender," Old High German weih "yielding, soft," German weich "soft," from PIE root *weik- "to bend, wind" (see vicarious). Sense of "lacking authority" is first recorded early 15c.; that of "lacking moral strength" late 14c. Weak-kneed "wanting in resolve" is from 1870.

Idioms and Phrases with weak

weak

also see:
spirit is willing but the flesh is weak