[-ING2.] That weakens, in various senses of the vb.
a. 1586. Sidney, Arcadia, III. ix. (1912), I. 397. You see we both doo feele The weakning worke of Times for ever-whirling wheele.
1694. trans. Milton’s Lett. of State, 240. To our great grief we have beheld the Protestant Princes … more and more at weakning variance among themselves.
1746. Francis, trans. Horace, Art of Poetry, 558. The weakening Joys of Wine and Love.
1797. Jane Austen, Sense & Sensib., xlvi. Marianne’s illness, though weakening in its kind, had not been long enough to make her recovery slow.
1843. R. J. Graves, Syst. Clin. Med., xx. 230. All weakening measures were therefore contra-indicated.
1856. Max Müller, Skr. Gram., 290. Changed … before weakening terminations beginning with consonants.
1899. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., VII. 595. A diagnosis easily explained by the weakening influence of influenza.
