feble

Forms

feble^[1]

• fieble, foible, feible, floibe, floive, flebe, foeble, feoble^[2][3]

Gamillscheg takes feble and floive for the regular outcomes of two Gallo-Romance forms, which then influenced each other.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *fēbelis,^[1] from Latin flēbilis (“lamentable, to be wept over”), whose first /l/ was lost by dissimilation.^[1][5][6] The Latin adjective is formed from fleō (“to weep”) with -bilis.^[7]

Gamillscheg sets up two Gallo-Romance forms, *feblis and *flebis, both from the Latin word by dissimilation, and notes that in Vulgar Latin it had come to mean "weak" as well, under the influence of dēbilis (“weak”).^[4] "Weak" is the only sense the Romance languages show, in Italian fievole and Old Occitan feble, the source of Spanish feble.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is fieble in the Chanson de Roland, about 1100 by the DEAF's dating, in its Anglo-Norman Oxford manuscript of about 1125;^[8][9][10] the DHLF and Greimas date the text 1080.^[6][11] It already means lacking strength, the sense from which the DHLF derives all the later ones.^[6]

Semantic evolution

From bodily weakness the word spread to things of little value (1170), to a lack of moral strength (1180), to a lack of intensity (1188) and to light coinage (1226).^[6] Tobler–Lommatzsch records it of things, of a pale colour and of what is insignificant,^[12] and in Chrétien de Troyes it describes a knight without strength: Erec fu foibles et quassez "Erec was weak and battered".^[13]

The central form foible was written until the Académie's dictionary of 1798, and modern French spells it faible;^[14] the DHLF calls the spelling with ⟨ai⟩ a late remaking of the 17th century.^[6] The noun faible "weak point" dates from about 1650,^[14] and English borrowed it in the 1640s as foible, first a fencing term.^[15] The dialects keep many forms, among them Walloon fwebe and Jersey faibl'ye.^[1]

Timeline

• c. 1100 – fieble in the Chanson de Roland (1080 by the DHLF's dating).^[8][10][6]
• 1113–1119 – the AND's first citation.^[3]
• c. 1160 – feble, by the DHLF's dating.^[6]
• c. 1170 – foible in Erec et Enide.^[13][16]
• 13th century – Judeo-French feible and floibe.^[14]
• 1798 – the last edition of the Académie's dictionary to spell it foible.^[14]

Meanings

Adjective

1. weak, feeble, lacking bodily strength.^[13][3]
2. weak in mind or will; lacking moral strength.^[3][12]
3. (of things) weak, of little force; faint, pale; insignificant.^[12]
4. poor, ill-supplied; powerless.^[3]

Anglo-Norman

The AND heads the word feble, first cites it from 1113–19, and lists the spellings feable, feeble, feible, feoble, fiebel, fieble, fleble and foible.^[3] Its insular senses include weak health, poor eyesight and a lack of resources or power.^[3] English feeble goes back to the Old French word in the late 12th century.^[15]

Word family

• feblesce
• foiblement

Descendants

• Middle French foible (→ French faible)^[1][14]
• Norman faibl'ye (Jersey)^[1]
• Walloon fwebe^[1]
• Middle English feble (borrowed; → English feeble)^[1][15]

Usage notes

The AND heads the word feble, while Tobler–Lommatzsch, Godefroy and the DÉCT head it foible and the DMF and the TLFi faible.^[3][13]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ FROLEX 3.0, lexique morphologique du français médiéval (IXe–XVe s.), Base de français médiéval, ENS de Lyon (from the BFM, the Nouveau Corpus d'Amsterdam and the DMF), github.com/sheiden/Medieval-French-Language-Toolkit
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–), p. s.v. feble
4. ^ a b Gamillscheg, Ernst (1966–1969), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der französischen Sprache, 2nd, fully revised ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 439
5. ^ a b Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France, p. 291
6. ^ a b c d e f g Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. faible
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. flēbilis
8. ^ a b Baldinger, Kurt; Möhren, Frankwalt; Städtler, Thomas, eds. (1971–2021), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français (DEAF), Heidelberg: Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften; DEAFél / DEAFpré, deaf-server.adw.uni-heidelberg.de, p. s.v. foible
9. ^ Stein, Achim; Kunstmann, Pierre; Gleßgen, Martin-D., eds., Nouveau Corpus d'Amsterdam, version 4 (lemmatised corpus of Old French texts, after A. Dees), Universität Stuttgart, github.com/michaniets/NCA (texts by DEAF siglum), p. RolS
10. ^ a b UD Old French PROFITEROLE and UD Middle French PROFITEROLE treebanks, Universal Dependencies (from the SRCMF and the Base de français médiéval; texts by DEAF siglum), p. RolS
11. ^ Greimas, Algirdas Julien (1979), Dictionnaire de l'ancien français jusqu'au milieu du XIVe siècle, 2nd ed., Paris: Larousse (printing of 1988), p. s.v. feble
12. ^ a b c Tobler, Adolf; Lommatzsch, Erhard (1925–2002), Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch, 11 vols., Berlin / Wiesbaden / Stuttgart: Weidmann / Steiner, p. 3:1971
13. ^ a b c d Dictionnaire électronique de Chrétien de Troyes (DÉCT), LFA / Université d'Ottawa – ATILF, CNRS / Université de Lorraine (2014), p. s.v. foible
14. ^ a b c d e Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 3:615
15. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
16. ^ Möhren, Frankwalt, Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français (DEAF): Complément bibliographique, electronic version (DEAFBiblEl), Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, alma.hadw-bw.de/deafbibl (texts by siglum, with their dates), p. ErecF