spent force

plural spent forces

1. A person, organization, or process which is no longer influential, effective, or robust.

   1921, P. G. Wodehouse, The Girl on the Boat (U.S.: Three Men and a Maid), ch. 2, I am a ruin, a spent force, a man without a future!

   3 more examples

   Evolution was not a spent force, but one still working.

   1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, chapter 5, in The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC

   “You remember those powerful end-of-term addresses he used to make to us? Well, he couldn't have made them if he hadn't had the stuff all typed out in his grasp, so that he could read it. Without his notes, as he calls them, he's a spent force.” [...] In stating that the Woosters never give up, I was in error. These words caught me amidships and took all the fighting spirit out of me, leaving me a spent force.

   1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, “II AND XX”, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC

   Bush already appeared to be a spent force, an unpopular President eking out his final days of power.

   2008 June 17, Catherine Mayer, “Leaving Europe, Bush Eyes Legacy”, in Time