(n.) A moral weakness; a failing; a weak point; a frailty.
(n.) The half of a sword blade or foil blade nearest the point; -- opposed to forte.
Example Sentences:
(1) Many of the patients anthropomorphise the seal, enjoy pretending that it is a real, living creature, with all the associated foibles.
(2) This week's edition of the FT's How to Spend It, suggests some Christmas foibles – £625 gloves, £705 Black Amber perfume, a £10,000 Boodles bangle.
(3) We're given a vivid description, details and foibles, before the town is populated with a cast of characters to rival any soap opera.
(4) If the mot juste was always a priority – "I suppose we all have our foibles.
(5) The sharp-witted late-night TV star, who regularly skewers the foibles of other celebrities, found himself on the end of the same treatment after being at the centre of a bizarre blackmail plot over the sexual affairs he had with younger female staff members.
(6) Children and their services have been prey to causes célèbres, fashion and the exaggerated fads and foibles of the media and politicians; they have thrived best when society and their carers were tolerant, and loving, sought good qualities to augment, not evil to exorcise, and succeeded in balancing structure and control with flexibility and freedom to grow.
(7) While cables exposing the foibles of Pakistan's civilian leaders triggered a media feeding frenzy, the press largely ignored revelations that cast the powerful military in a bad light, including its alleged support for Islamist extremist groups such as the Taliban.
(8) This is not about the exposure of one man's alleged foibles.
(9) We tend not to pin that badge on Ukip because of a paradoxical foible of Britishness that makes imagined immunity from aggressive identity politics a point of national pride.
(10) I'm afraid I didn't enjoy either Django Unchained or Inglourious Basterds – they were too self-reverential for my taste – but, as a writer, nobody in the world has a better ear for the foibles and vulnerabilities of his bad guys than Tarantino.
(11) Gray was as funny and vicious about his own haplessness as he was about the foibles of others.
(12) WS: That Bafta routine of yours in the show was the crux for me – a perfect exemplar of your character’s foibles, because the ambiguity is absolute: Does he care about not winning one or not?
(13) By contrast, this collection – which will be available online immediately and in shops in July – celebrated British foibles and eccentricities, in the animal-motif knitwear and eclectic mix of town and country fabrics.
(14) The well done steak is not simply a personal foible, like preferring pepperoni pizza to a margarita.
(15) And, for all his foibles, Mad-Eye Moody from Harry Potter is a man you'd follow, too.
(16) This essay on the last years of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's life exhibits all of Sebald's strengths as a writer – and all of his strange, gnomic, secretive foibles.
(17) For example, I've never heard him acknowledge that, in joking about Georgina Sachs's sexual foibles and menstrual cycle , he was demeaning to her.
(18) Over the years, scrutiny of Westminster has gradually come to rest on personal foibles, grudges and coups both real and imaginary - a kind of higher office-politics.
(19) The emphasis was always on the comedy, the foibles and peccadilloes of the characters, a gentle cynicism about the ways of the world, a joy in puns, a love of irritating footnotes, a relish for the bathetic puncturing of the bombastic – and above all an irrepressible and infectious silliness.
(20) None of us is free of foibles and peculiarities that the patient notices sooner or later.
Habit
Definition:
(n.) The usual condition or state of a person or thing, either natural or acquired, regarded as something had, possessed, and firmly retained; as, a religious habit; his habit is morose; elms have a spreading habit; esp., physical temperament or constitution; as, a full habit of body.
(n.) The general appearance and manner of life of a living organism.
(n.) Fixed or established custom; ordinary course of conduct; practice; usage; hence, prominently, the involuntary tendency or aptitude to perform certain actions which is acquired by their frequent repetition; as, habit is second nature; also, peculiar ways of acting; characteristic forms of behavior.
(n.) Outward appearance; attire; dress; hence, a garment; esp., a closely fitting garment or dress worn by ladies; as, a riding habit.
(n.) To inhabit.
(n.) To dress; to clothe; to array.
(n.) To accustom; to habituate. [Obs.] Chapman.
Example Sentences:
(1) No associations were found between sex, body-weight, smoking habits, age, urine volume or urine pH and the O-demethylation of codeine.
(2) The effect of dietary fibre digestion in the human gut on its ability to alter bowel habit and impair mineral absorption has been investigated using the technique of metablic balance.
(3) The socioeconomic and hygienic features of the patients' homes, some clinical variables, the therapeutic habits and the features of the foci were evaluated.
(4) The authors compared the prevalence of atopy in 103 patients with lung cancer (a model of mucosal cancer), 51 patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease matched for age, sex, and smoking habits with patients with lung cancer, and 102 healthy control subjects.
(5) Possible explanations of the clinical gains include 1) psychological encouragement, 2) improvements of mechanical efficiency, 3) restoration of cardiovascular fitness, thus breaking a vicous circle of dyspnoea, inactivity and worsening dyspnoea, 4) strengthening of the body musculature, thus reducing the proportion of anaerobic work, 5) biochemical adaptations reducing glycolysis in the active tissues, and 6) indirect responses to such factors as group support, with advice on smoking habits, breathing patterns and bronchial hygiene.
(6) The results of a prospective inquiry into the aspirin taking habits of a consecutive series of 118 patients admitted to a large general hospital with acute perforation of peptic ulcer are presented.
(7) It is stated, that it is impossible to strive to effectively control the smoking habit neither by way of the consulting hours for smokers nor by means of the 5-days-plans.
(8) symptoms, bowel habits, normal physical examination, absence of intestinal infections or parasites) b) physiopathological evaluation (hyperactivity of the distal colon, hypersensitivity to stimuli, stress), and c) physiological evaluation of the patient.
(9) of age and based upon information about the dietary habits of the child could thus be of value to prevent caries in the preschool child.
(10) Population intervention to obtain better health habits and special actions for individuals with risks factors must be employed.
(11) No significant differences were found in caries or gingival indices, in oral habits or prophylactic measures between the two groups.
(12) Thus, the dental health and dietary habits of the Greek immigrant and the Swedish children were generally very similar, while the Greek rural children showed a less favourable cariological status.
(13) However, no correlation was observed as far as sex, pH of saliva and smoking habits were concerned.
(14) Patients with malignant disease are known to have an increased incidence of multinucleation in their tracheobronchial ciliated epithelial cells as compared with controls matched by age, sex and smoking habit.
(15) It is concluded that the development was influenced by several factors, such as different snacking habits and access to sweets, the study per se, and xylitol-induced effects.
(16) When age and smoking habits were controlled for, slope of phase III was significantly related to hospitalization due to respiratory disease in general and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), whereas closing volume and closing capacity were marginally related to hospitalization due to respiratory disease in general but not to hospitalization due to COPD.
(17) The present article reports a study of how such lifestyle habits, notably alcohol and tobacco consumption, are addressed in medical consultations.
(18) Serum estradiol and estrone levels during oral hormone administration were lower in smokers than in nonsmokers, whereas no differences related to smoking habits were observed during percutaneous hormone administration.
(19) Our findings suggest that (a) the inclusion of a liquid meal provides a reproducible method of measuring orocaecal transit using the lactulose hydrogen breath test, (b) rapid small bowel transit in thyrotoxicosis may be one factor in the diarrhoea which is a feature of the disease and (c) if altered gut transit is the cause of sluggish bowel habit in hypothyroidism, delay in the colon, and not small bowel, is likely to be responsible.
(20) In addition, eight patient questionnaires were used to assess prescribing habits regarding benzodiazepines.