imbecility

Armitage gave himself a mental kick for what he termed his imbecility, and went back to the hotel.

From the Ranks Charles King 1888

If youth, inexperience or just plain imbecility factors in to make the killing a waste through loss of meat or trophy -- I say we give the goofball a good stomping!

Testing Your Mettle 2008

Young men are more frequently wanton and dissolute than old men; but yet, as it is not all young men that are so, but the bad set among them, even so senile folly -- usually called imbecility -- applies to old men of unsound character, not to all.

Treatises on Friendship and Old Age Marcus Tullius Cicero 1874

The TRUSTEE himself should determine that, by such testimony as he approves, and not appear to seek to bolster up the decisions of truth and faithfulness, by calling on Indian ignorance and imbecility, which is subject to be operated on by every species of selfishness.

Memoirs of 30 Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers Schoolcraft, H R 1851

_that_, by such testimony as he approves, and not appear to seek to bolster up the decisions of truth and faithfulness, by calling on Indian ignorance and imbecility, which is subject to be operated on by every species of selfishness.

Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers Henry Rowe Schoolcraft 1828

It takes a special kind of imbecility to continue contradicting oneself even after the contradiction has been pointed out.

The true origin of "intelligent design" - The Panda's Thumb 2007

Those who so deplore my 'imbecility' and 'incapacity' are the very men who are endeavoring to bring about a collision between the people of Kansas and the troops under General Ewing's command.

Forty-Six Years in the Army John M. Schofield

Urged on by the emissaries of that colossal superstition which casts its shadow over this Republic (whose home is a foreign kingdom, and whose head is a foreign prince), the semi-barbarous hordes of mingled races in the South American States, are a prey to successive bloody revolutions, through that imbecility which is the sure result of the amalgamation of civilization with barbarism.

The Right of American Slavery

The man recovered himself slowly, and then affected that look of imbecility which is invariably the Dutchman's effort at self-protection when he is cornered by a question which he does not wish to answer.

On the Heels of De Wet Lionel James 1913

Jefferson expressed himself as being ardently desirous of seeing a good system commenced for raising the condition both of the body and the mind of the slaves to what it ought to be as fast as the "imbecility" of their then existence and other circumstances, which could not be neglected, would admit.

The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 A History of the Education of the Colored People of the United States from the Beginning of Slavery to the Civil War Carter Godwin Woodson 1912