forcible-feeble

For, at heart, the Professor abhorred change — he called it disorder — and, after one forcible-feeble effort to escape from his crusted shell, he sank back into it with what was almost a sigh of thanksgiving.

Two Tales of Old Strasbourg 2003

Skin-the-Goat, assuming he was he, evidently with an axe to grind, was airing his grievances in a forcible-feeble philippic anent the natural resources of Ireland or something of that sort which he described in his lengthy dissertation as the richest country bar none on the face of

Ulysses 2003

The pitiful little forcible-feeble rebellion, all along but a futile attempt to cast straws against the wind, was now completely over and done with, and would never be heard of again.

Australia Felix 2003

General Johnston's camp during Buchanan's forcible-feeble occupation of

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 Various

This recovery was due also to the forcible-feeble character of the Radical campaign against the House of Lords, the unpopularity of the

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" Various

Governor Martin of North Carolina, already deeply disturbed in anticipation of the coming revolutionary cataclysm, thundered in what was generally regarded as a forcible-feeble proclamation (February 19, 1775) against

The Conquest of the Old Southwest; the romantic story of the early pioneers into Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Kentucky, 1740-1790 Archibald Henderson 1920

There is nothing wrong in this; it is simply threadbare and forcible-feeble.

Misused Expressions 1918

You, my hosts, and I may not agree in all our views; some of you would think me a very radical democrat—as, for the matter of that, I am—and my theory of imperialism would probably suit the anti-imperialists as little as it would suit a certain type of forcible-feeble imperialist.

II. Biological Analogies in History 1913

But even this situation 'peters out', the wife being sent away with her fate undecided, and the husband, represented as a 'forcible-feeble' person by the dramatist and as a feeble person, tout court, by the actor ....

Slang. 1908

The forcible-feeble malice of Mr Fletcher calls for no serious discussion; submit it to any continental scholar, to any honest British scholar, and he will ask contemptuously, though perhaps with a little stab of pain, how the name of Oxford comes to be associated with such wicked absurdities.

The Open Secret of Ireland 1898