Weakly

//ˈwiːkli// adj, adv

adj, adv ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Frail, sickly or of a delicate constitution; weak.

    "I lay in weakly case and confined to my bed for four months before I was able to rise and health returned to me."

Adjective
  1. 1
    lacking bodily or muscular strength or vitality wordnet
Adverb
  1. 1
    With little strength or force.

    "The basitemporal platform is flat in posterior view because the mamillar tuberosities are very weakly developed."

Adverb
  1. 1
    in a weak or feeble manner or to a minor degree wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
decrepita bita la sourdinea littleanemicasthenic

Example

More examples

"She protested weakly, but ended up joining in with everyone else."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Old English wāclīċe (“weakly”), equivalent to weak + -ly (adjectival suffix); compare Old English wāclīċ (“weak; ignoble; mean”), and Old Norse veikligr (“weakly; sick”); both ultimately from Proto-Germanic *waikalīkaz (“weakly; weak”).

Etymology 2

From Middle English weykly, equivalent to weak + -ly (adverbial suffix). Compare Old High German weihlīcho (“weakly”), Middle English wocliche, wokli, wacliche (both from Proto-Germanic *waikalīkō).

Related phrases

super weakly interacting massive particleweakly cardinalweakly contractibleweakly interacting massive particleweakly symmetric matterweakly-typed

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.