forcible-feeble

Definitions

Having a vigorous appearance, but in reality weak or insipid.

archaic

Examples

“He would purge his book of much offensive matter⟳, if he struck out epithets which are in the bad taste⟳ of the forcible-feeble school.”

“But [allegory] is apt to spoil⟳ two good things—a story and a moral, a meaning and a form⟳; and the taste⟳ for it is responsible for a large part of the forcible feeble writing that has been inflicted on the world.”

“Skin-the-Goat, assuming he was he, evidently with an axe to grind⟳, was airing his grievances in a forcible-feeble philippic anent the natural resources of Ireland or something of that sort⟳ which he described in his lengthy dissertation as the richest country bar none on the face⟳ of God's earth […]”

CEFR level