weak: Meaning and Definition of

weak

Pronunciation: (wēk), [key]
— -er, -est.
  1. not strong; liable to yield, break, or collapse under pressure or strain; fragile; frail: a weak fortress; a weak spot in armor.
  2. lacking in bodily strength or healthy vigor, as from age or sickness; feeble; infirm: a weak old man; weak eyes.
  3. not having much political strength, governing power, or authority: a weak nation; a weak ruler.
  4. lacking in force, potency, or efficacy; impotent, ineffectual, or inadequate: weak sunlight; a weak wind.
  5. lacking in rhetorical or creative force or effectiveness: a weak reply to the charges; one of the author's weakest novels.
  6. lacking in logical or legal force or soundness: a weak argument.
  7. deficient in mental power, intelligence, or judgment: a weak mind.
  8. not having much moral strength or firmness, resolution, or force of character: to prove weak under temptation; weak compliance.
  9. deficient in amount, volume, loudness, intensity, etc.; faint; slight: a weak current of electricity; a weak pulse.
  10. deficient, lacking, or poor in something specified: a hand weak in trumps; I'm weak in spelling.
  11. deficient in the essential or usual properties or ingredients: weak tea.
  12. unstressed, as a syllable, vowel, or word.
  13. (of Germanic verbs) inflected with suffixes, without inherited change of the root vowel, as English work, worked, or having a preterit ending in a dental, as English bring, brought.
  14. (of Germanic nouns and adjectives) inflected with endings originally appropriate to stems terminating in -n, as the adjective alte in German der alte Mann (“the old man”).
  15. (of wheat or flour) having a low gluten content or having a poor quality of gluten.
  16. thin; not dense.
  17. characterized by a decline in prices: The market was weak in the morning but rallied in the afternoon.
Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Copyright © 1997, by Random House, Inc., on Infoplease.
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