What's the difference between decrepit and infirm?

Decrepit


Definition:

  • (a.) Broken down with age; wasted and enfeebled by the infirmities of old age; feeble; worn out.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) In 1972, he launched a more ambitious plan by buying Hintlesham Hall, a decrepit grade-11 listed building in Suffolk, converting it into a home and three restaurants and taking over the Hintlesham festival held there.
  • (2) Some of Rio's most impressive architecture can still be found in and around Praça XV, but it has been throttled by modernity, its colonial charm obliterated by a concrete flyover, now black and decrepit, built directly over the top of it.
  • (3) Caine’s Guardian reader may be decrepit and disillusioned but still oozes wit and discerning taste.
  • (4) I really want to say thank you for the kind way my decrepit body was washed; how, in the middle of the night when I felt overwhelmed, a nurse stopped what she was doing and held my hand; the cake covered in Smarties the catering staff brought me for my birthday; the smiles and jokes with the staff to pass the long days; and Mr Burbos (one of the handsome consultant surgeons) who has been so generous with his time and care.
  • (5) One disingenuous objection to fairer taxing of property pleads for cash-poor, asset-rich old folk rattling around in drafty, decrepit mansions.
  • (6) This is not because it’s a decrepit, leaking ship, as often depicted, but because every modern healthcare system in the world will always need more money, more research and more beds, to give patients the best chance of treatment.
  • (7) The latest WHO figures underscore Ebola’s asymmetric spread, as it travels through densely populated communities with decrepit health facilities and poor public awareness campaigns.
  • (8) The Walworth Farce, which opens at the National Theatre next week, focuses on a tyrannical Irishman who has kept his two sons locked in a decrepit flat since the trio arrived in London almost two decades before.
  • (9) Another avenue is supporting the decrepit political opposition group that exists.
  • (10) Particularly striking is the fact that Britain will end up spending less as a proportion of its national income than even the US, the international byword for a decrepit public sector.
  • (11) They have already been biting the community – one of my children's school is a decrepit building, which was built in the 70s, a mass of concrete with rotten windows and broken doors.
  • (12) This did not happen overnight, and the sorry conduct of the referendum campaign was only the latest indication of the decrepit state of our politics: dominated by shameless appeals to fear, as though hope were a currency barely worth trading in, the British public had no such thing as a better nature, and a brighter future held no appeal.
  • (13) This fact, which confirms the decrepitation theorem, could explain the explosion inside the tissues observed in surgical application of the Nd:YAG laser.
  • (14) But the worst are shikumen s, no matter how historically significant or beautiful, that have become so decrepit and grimy from decades of overcrowding, heavy communal usage and minimal infrastructural investment by residents and local authorities.
  • (15) Many were in decrepit tower-blocks, sky high and matchstick small.
  • (16) I have known the squalid, damp bedrooms of the decrepit council house; the wait for the child benefit to buy the next meal; the reality of a bag of chips being a cheaper and more comforting alternative to a nutritious meal; the constant linkage of school to failure throughout our family generations; and the inevitable lure of cigarettes and alcohol to ease the pain.
  • (17) In tears and confusion, thousands of women, children and old men expelled from Srebrenica poured off buses yesterday at the decrepit air base in the town of Tuzla, northern Bosnia, accusing Serb rebels of murder and rape and the United Nations of indifference during the fall of the enclave.
  • (18) Earlier this month, more than 600 million people lost power when the country's decrepit electricity grid collapsed .
  • (19) The debt crisis that erupted in 2009 exposed the decrepit state of the country's structures.
  • (20) She looked forward to a life beyond the decrepit confines of the capital.

Infirm


Definition:

  • (a.) Not firm or sound; weak; feeble; as, an infirm body; an infirm constitution.
  • (a.) Weak of mind or will; irresolute; vacillating.
  • (a.) Not solid or stable; insecure; precarious.
  • (v. t.) To weaken; to enfeeble.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The thrust of health care "solutions" in the press and in Congress focus on the infirm.
  • (2) Those allocated a diagnosis of dementia were most impaired and confused, and those living in specialist homes for the mentally infirm were more impaired than other residents.
  • (3) Photograph: Eamonn Mccabe I is for Italy He lived for many years in a mountain-top retreat in Ravello on the Amalfi coast until he became too infirm to cope with the hills.
  • (4) Anyone who is pregnant, breastfeeding or infirm should talk to a GP before taking the herb.
  • (5) The cell bodies of the AVCN did not seem altered infirming a rapid, direct or indirect, neurotoxic effect of the drug.
  • (6) This paper describes one of the first attempts at an economic evaluation of a community care initiative for elderly mentally infirm people and their carers.
  • (7) It appears to become more severe with advanced age and other infirmities, such as immobility.
  • (8) It was one of at least half a dozen such unionist experiments, with a variety of partners, which foundered on the rocks of the would-be partners' infirmity of purpose, fear, suspicion and disdain of this bizarre, arrogant, impetuous upstart.
  • (9) While the courts welcome Russian oligarchs whose disputes have nothing to do with this country, they close their doors to the cheated, the battered and the infirm from the native poor.
  • (10) Swing your gaze from the aged and infirm to your fit and healthy peers here and abroad embracing fascism and poor-bashing.
  • (11) Other factors included pre-existing locomotor disorder or mental infirmity, unmanageable incontinence of urine after catheterisation, and institutional disorientation.
  • (12) The increasing infirmity of the aged often associated with tiredness, dyspnea and dizziness even without treatment requires careful instruction of the patient about effects and side effects of the prescribed medication.
  • (13) 11.01am BST Lord Norman Tebbit , the Tory former cabinet minister, says he worries such a bill would bring great pressure on the old, infirm or disabled to consider ending their lives so as to not be a financial burden on others.
  • (14) If "pain" in the broad sense of the term lends itself to objective evaluation with difficulty, it is not the same with respect to infirmity.
  • (15) The results of one such arrangement where a geriatrician was involved in the weekly review of the elderly mentally infirm patients are described.
  • (16) The dual rating system eliminates the problem of declining knee scores associated with patient infirmity.
  • (17) Neurotic applicants for an infirmity-pension belong to the group of problem patients for attending general practitioners and specialists alike.
  • (18) Please do not let us remember only the sick and infirm.
  • (19) Yet every local authority in the land allows men like these as well as our sick, elderly and infirm to be left to the tender mercies of profiteers and cowboys.
  • (20) Now staff and volunteers hunched over the infirm, dispensing sips of water and fanning them with bits of cardboard.