Adjective
enervating (comparative more enervating, superlative most enervating)
- That enervates.
1827, Lydia Sigourney, Poems, Grave of the Mother of Washington, page 10:No enervating arts refined
To slumber lull'd his heaven-born might;
No weak indulgence warp'd thy mind,
To cloud a hero's path of light.
1828, [Edward Bulwer-Lytton], chapter XX, in Pelham; or, The Adventures of a Gentleman. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 196:I rose by candle-light, and consumed, in the intensest application, the hours which every other individual of our party wasted in enervating slumbers, from the hesternal dissipation or debauch.
1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter III (Accessory After the Fact), page 382, column 1:Turning back, then, toward the basement staircase, she began to grope her way through blinding darkness, but had taken only a few uncertain steps when, of a sudden, she stopped short and for a little stood like a stricken thing, quite motionless save that she quaked to her very marrow in the grasp of a great and enervating fear.