Lacking strength or effectiveness.
Weakness with weeping in its ancestry
Latin
flēre
‘to weep’
within Latin
Latin
flebilis
‘lamentable, wretched’
into Old French
Old French
feble
‘weak, feeble’
into Middle English
Middle English
feble
‘lacking strength or vigor’
became English
English
feeble
A word for weakness reaches back to a verb for weeping.
Latin flēre, to weep, produced flebilis, lamentable or wretched. Through Anglo-French, the word reached Middle English feble with a weak sense. Modern feeble keeps that later meaning.
Selected stages include derivation as well as semantic change. Anglo-French lies between the Latin adjective and Middle English.
Two Latin stages show that a word’s history can change within one language.