FRAILTY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does frailty mean? 

• FRAILTY (noun)
  The noun FRAILTY has 2 senses:

1. the state of being weak in health or body (especially from old age)

2. moral weakness

  Familiarity information: FRAILTY used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• FRAILTY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The state of being weak in health or body (especially from old age)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

debility; feebleness; frailness; frailty; infirmity; valetudinarianism

Hypernyms ("frailty" is a kind of...):

softness; unfitness (poor physical condition; being out of shape or out of condition (as from a life of ease and luxury))

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "frailty"):

asthenia; astheny (an abnormal loss of strength)

cachexia; cachexy; wasting (any general reduction in vitality and strength of body and mind resulting from a debilitating chronic disease)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Moral weakness

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

frailty; vice

Hypernyms ("frailty" is a kind of...):

evil; evilness (the quality of being morally wrong in principle or practice)

 Context examples 

In addition, a daily intake of milk and dairy products among elderly people may reduce the risk of frailty and sarcopenia.

(Adequate intake of milk and dairy products in different life stages helps prevent chronic diseases, University of Granada)

Compared to those who were robust and active, participants with cognitive frailty who were inactive had the highest mortality risk, which was equivalent to being almost 7 years older.

(Engaging in physical activity could reduce long-term mortality, University of Granada)

I grow timid when I am face to face with my human frailty, which ever prevents me from grasping all the factors in any problem—human, vital problems, you know.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

There were few people on whose secrecy she would have more confidently depended; but, at the same time, there was no one whose knowledge of a sister's frailty would have mortified her so much—not, however, from any fear of disadvantage from it individually to herself, for, at any rate, there seemed a gulf impassable between them.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

For I have always borne that laudable partiality to my own country, which Dionysius Halicarnassensis, with so much justice, recommends to an historian: I would hide the frailties and deformities of my political mother, and place her virtues and beauties in the most advantageous light.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Yet I have heard you speak so often with broad charity of the fallibility and frailty of humankind.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Cognitive frailty is a heterogeneous clinical manifestation characterized by the simultaneous presence of both physical frailty and cognitive impairment, in the absence of dementia, and it seems to entail a greater death risk than physical frailty or cognitive impairment separately.

(Engaging in physical activity could reduce long-term mortality, University of Granada)

His love was more ardent than ever, for he loved her for what she was, and even her physical frailty was an added charm in his eyes.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Despite the potential effect of regular physical activity to slow cognitive decline and its association with lower mortality in nonfrail individuals, no previous studies have investigated whether and to what extent physical activity could attenuate the effect of cognitive frailty on mortality.

(Engaging in physical activity could reduce long-term mortality, University of Granada)

You spoke yourself of the human frailty that prevented one from taking all the factors into consideration.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)