To make weak; to lessen the strength of; to
deprive of strength; to debilitate; to enfeeble; to enervate; as,
to weaken the body or the mind; to weaken the hands of a
magistrate; to weaken the force of an objection or an argument.
[1913 Webster] Their hands shall be weakened from the work, that it
be not done. --Neh. vi.
[1913 Webster]
To reduce in quality, strength, or spirit; as, to
weaken tea; to weaken any solution or decoction. [1913
Webster]
Word Net
weakening adj2 moderating by making pain or sorrow
weaker
Noun
1 becoming weaker [ant: strengthening]
2 the act of reducing the strength of something
[ant: strengthening]
Moby Thesaurus
abatement, abridgment, alleviation, attenuation, attrition, bankruptcy, blunting, breakage, breakdown, collapse, contraction, crack-up, crippling, damage, dampening, damping, deadening, debilitation, decrease, decrement, decrescence, deduction, deflation, depreciation, depression, destruction, detriment, devitalization, devitalizing, dilapidation, dilution, diminishment, diminution, disablement, disrepair, draining, dulling, dying, dying off, effemination, encroachment, enervating, enervation, enfeeblement, enfeebling, evisceration, exhausting, exhaustion, extenuation, fade-out, fatigue, fatiguing, grueling, harm, hobbling, hurt, hurting, impairment, inanition, incapacitation, infringement, injury, inroad, languishment, lessening, letup, loss, lowering, maiming, mayhem, miniaturization, mischief, mitigation, mutilation, reduction, relaxation, ruination, ruinousness, sabotage, sagging, sapping, scaling down, scathe, sickening, simplicity, slackening, softening, spoiling, subtraction, thinning, tryingEnglish
Verb
weakening- present participle of weaken
Noun
- An instance or process of loss of strength
- A structural principle of mathematical logic that states that the hypotheses of any derived fact may be freely extended with additional assumptions
Monotonicity of entailment is a property of
many logical
systems that states that the hypotheses of any derived fact may
be freely extended with additional assumptions. In sequent calculi
this property can be captured by an inference rule called
weakening, or sometimes thinning, and in such systems one may say
that entailment is monotone just in case the rule is admissible.
Logical systems with this property are occasionally called
monotonic logics in order to differentiate them from non-monotonic
logics.
Weakening rule
To illustrate, starting from the natural
deduction sequent:
Γ \vdash C
weakening allows one to conclude:
Γ, A \vdash C
Non-monotonic logics
In most logics, weakening is either an inference rule or a metatheorem if the logic doesn't have an explicit rule. Notable exceptions are:- Strict logic or relevant logic, where every hypothesis must be necessary for the conclusion.
- Linear logic which disallows arbitrary contraction in addition to arbitrary weakening.
- Bunched implications where weakening is restricted to additive composition.
See also
weakening in German: Monotonie
(Logik)