infirm
/ɪnˈfəːm
/adjective
1Not physically or mentally strong, especially through age or illness: those who were old or infirm elderly and infirm people (as plural noun the infirm) care for the infirm...
- Mentally and physically infirm, he stayed in the jail lobby for three days before anyone noticed him.
- Furthermore, the home was failing to create an environment where mentally ill and physically infirm people could properly be cared for and safely live alongside each other.
- The development will include an elderly and mentally infirm unit, and 55 residential flats on land adjacent to the cricket ground.
Synonyms
frail, weak, feeble, enfeebled, weakly, debilitated, decrepit, bedridden;
ill, unwell, sick, sickly, poorly, indisposed, in poor/declining health, failing, ailing;
doddering, doddery, tottering, wobbly, unsteady, unstable
1.1 archaic (Of a person or their judgement) weak; irresolute: he was infirm of purpose...
- While standing for an expanded trade unionism the left has to carefully but firmly distinguish itself from their Congress' infirm vision.
- Keenly sensitive to these insults, Raglan had to grapple with a French command whose sense of purpose seemed infirm.
- A court cannot grant finality to a constitutionally infirm judgment.
Derivatives
infirmly
- Nor am I the slightest bit interested in using the model of an out-dated, infirmly and inferiorly working European, Japanese and general world scenario.
- The catalytic activity is related to the total SO42− groups bonded on the surface of the substrate but not those infirmly bonded.
Origin
Late Middle English (in the general sense 'weak, frail'): from Latin infirmus, from in- 'not' + firmus 'firm'.