weakening

weakening

1. present participle of weaken

weakening (countable and uncountable, plural weakenings)

1. An instance or process of loss of strength.
   • Charles Dickens

     That immortal creature had gone over the proofs with great pains — had of course taken out the stiflings — hard-plungings, lungeings, and other convulsions — and had also taken out her weakenings and damagings of her own effects.

2. (uncountable, mathematics) A structural principle of mathematical logic that states that the hypotheses of any derived fact may be freely extended with additional assumptions.