Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Unable to think clearly or infirm because of old age.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Old-womanish; imbecile: as, “puerile or anile ideas,” Walpole, Catalogue of Engravers.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Old-womanish; imbecile.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Characteristic of a
crone or afeeble old woman .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective of or like a feeble old woman
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The other was anile, which led me to uncover what I like to call the Great Anile Conspiracy — a strange and almost exciting phenomenon that I hope to detail in an upcoming post.
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Once again, being too specific results in being rather anile (anybody want to graph this?).
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The other was anile, which led me to uncover what I like to call the Great Anile Conspiracy — a strange and almost exciting phenomenon that I hope to detail in an upcoming post.
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Learning how to simultaneously walk and chew gum will soon be added to the menu of anile crap that our self-regarding progressive school system 'facilitates'.
Smoking Guns and the Morality of Parliamentary Privilege 2009
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She says in an anile thready high cracking voice, "Oh, you're reading."
An essay about how when you're reading a Kindle in public, people don't see what book you're reading. Ann Althouse 2009
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Whether they are actuated by folly and anile devotion, or whether by arrogance and malice so that they alone may be held to possess the secrets of God, I know not: this much I do know, that I find in their writings nothing which has the air of a Divine secret, but only childish lucubrations.
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Not too be too anile, but I think that is from A New Pilgrims Progress, not Roughing it
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A friend of mine was dining at a large dinner of clergymen, and a story, as true as the sausage story above given, was told regarding me, by one of those reverend divines, in whose frock sits some anile chatter-boxes, as any man who knows this world knows.
Roundabout Papers 2006
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Croaker expended a great deal of energy keeping the anile off his face, but Lillehammer had gone red.
The Kaisho Lustbader, Eric 1983
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Our babbling, anile friend, in the very looseness of her prating has let out the truth.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, October 2, 1841 Various
bestiary commented on the word anile
the feminine counterpart of senile.
July 24, 2008
tbtabby commented on the word anile
I just heard a contestant guess this on Lingo. I was blown away when I found out it was a real word.
January 22, 2009