FOIBLE • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Foible

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/fˈɔɪbəl/ Listen

noun

Foible n.

A moral weakness; a failing; a weak point; a frailty. " A disposition radically noble and generous, clouded and overshadowed by superficial foibles."

The half of a sword blade or foil blade nearest the point; opposed to forte. (Written also faible)

Synonyms: Fault; imperfection; failing; weakness; infirmity; frailty; defect. See Fault.

adjective

Foible adj. Weak; feeble. (Obs.)

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Etymology of 'Foible'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Foible" Quotes from Famous Books

... dancing to Daddy's music. Never were people happier on an island. A moment's pause is presently created by the return of CRICHTON, wearing the wonderful robe of which we have already had dark mention. Never has he looked more regal, never perhaps felt so regal. We need not grudge him the one foible of his rule, for it is all coming ...

— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie

... that philosophical study and scientific vivisection of character which two friends are always so ready to practice at the expense of a third, and which weak-minded people confound with scandal, to no foible is the knife so pitilessly applied as to vanity. What makes this rigor seem all the more cruel and unnatural is that vanity never gets so little quarter as from those who ought, one would think, to be on the best possible terms with her. She is never justified of her children, and, like Byron's ...

— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... views, as she used to call them: while I was for considering the liberties he took of this sort, as the effect of a temporary pleasantry, which, in a young man, not naturally good-humoured, I was glad to see; or as a foible that deserved raillery, but no ...

— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... replete with the usual quaint Vicary details—such as the solemn warning whisper of an equerry in Vicary's ear as he walked backwards, 'Mind the edge of the carpet'; and we all laughed, I absently, and yet a little hysterically—all save Vicary, whose foible was never to laugh. But immediately afterwards there was a pause, one of those disconcerting, involuntary pauses which at a social gathering are like a chill hint of autumn in late summer, and which ...

— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett

... that I have this human weakness myself. String is my foible. My pockets get full of little hanks of it, picked up and twisted together, ready for uses that never come. I am seriously annoyed if any one cuts the string of a parcel instead of patiently and faithfully undoing it fold by fold. How people can bring themselves to use india-rubber bands, which ...

— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood

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