Meanings
- gerundparticiplepresentpresent participle and gerund of enervate
comparative more enervating · superlative most enervating
- That enervates.
No enervating arts refined To slumber lull'd his heaven-born might; No weak indulgence warp'd thy mind, To cloud a hero's path of light.
1827, Lydia Sigourney, Poems, Grave of the Mother of Washington, page 102 more examples
I rose by candle-light, and consumed, in the intensest application, the hours which every other individual of our party wasted in enervating slumbers, from the hesternal dissipation or debauch.
1828, [Edward Bulwer-Lytton], chapter XX, in Pelham; or, The Adventures of a Gentleman. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 196Turning back, then, toward the basement staircase, she began to grope her way through blinding darkness, but had taken only a few uncertain steps when, of a sudden, she stopped short and for a little stood like a stricken thing, quite motionless save that she quaked to her very marrow in the grasp of a great and enervating fear.
1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter III (Accessory After the Fact), page 382, column 1
Synonyms & antonyms
adjectivecausing debilitation
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Cite this entry
enervating. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/enervating
“enervating.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/enervating. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “enervating,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/enervating.
Source: enervating on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.