(v. t.) To excavate the earth beneath, or the part of, especially for the purpose of causing to fall or be overthrown; to form a mine under; to sap; as, to undermine a wall.
(v. t.) Fig.: To remove the foundation or support of by clandestine means; to ruin in an underhand way; as, to undermine reputation; to undermine the constitution of the state.
Example Sentences:
(1) Their efforts will include blocking the NSA from undermining encryption and barring other law enforcement agencies from collecting US data in bulk.
(2) And any Labour commitment on spending is fatally undermined by their deficit amnesia.” Davey widened the attack on the Tories, following a public row this week between Clegg and Theresa May over the “snooper’s charter”, by accusing his cabinet colleague Eric Pickles of coming close to abusing his powers by blocking new onshore developments against the wishes of some local councils.
(3) Chadwick felt that Customs and Trading Standards needed to continue their war on illegal tobacco – if not, efforts to tackle smoking could be undermined.
(4) But for decades now there has been a systematic undermining of it [the NHS’s] core values.
(5) The government also faced considerable international political pressure, with the United Nations' special rapporteur on torture, Juan Méndez, calling publicly on the government to "provide full redress to the victims, including fair and adequate compensation", and writing privately to David Cameron, along with two former special rapporteurs, to warn that the government's position was undermining its moral authority across the world.
(6) Like the doctor who makes a decision to operate without consulting the patient, I’m diminishing your autonomy by undermining it.
(7) There, the US Joint Commission, an independent, non-profit organisation that accredits healthcare organisations and programmes has issued a standard on “behaviours that undermine a culture of safety” to tackle “intimidating and disruptive behaviour at work”.
(8) Group B meningococcal vaccine consisting of the natural complex of specific polysaccharide and outer membrane protein (OMP) has been shown to be moderately reactogenic, safe with respect to the effect of undermining tolerance to human brain tissue antigens and to produce no allergization of humans.
(9) The end of the cold war and a reshaping of the threats faced by the UK had undermined the logic of nuclear deterrence strategy, he said.
(10) Then Greece has another chance.” But the intervention by the IMF will undermine EU leaders who argue Greece must submit to a fresh round of austerity measures to release funds for debt repayments.
(11) Entitled Jobs, Justice and Equity, the report warned that growing inequality, marginalisation and disenfranchisement are threatening Africa's prospects and undermining the foundations of its recent success.
(12) Umunna said: "Where you have pay awards that bear no relation to performance, but also can be beyond what a company can sustain, it really undermines trust in the whole system.
(13) The home team's defence had been undermined by naivety and it was in evidence when Stepanov, already on a yellow card for a foul on McGeady and having been played into trouble, lunged for the ball only to be beaten to it by Keane.
(14) The home secretary has been concerned that British involvement in the UN refugee programme would become an open-ended commitment that risked undermining the Tories' commitment to reduce net migration to the UK to tens of thousands by 2015.
(15) The Public Accounts committee (PAC) said on Thursday that the "chaos" surrounding the failure of G4S to provide enough staff for the Olympics had undermined confidence in Games organisers.
(16) Moreover, uncertainty about the resolution of these fiscal issues could itself undermine business and household confidence," said Bernanke.
(17) The clashes between the moralistic Levin and his friend Oblonsky, sometimes affectionate, sometimes angry, and Levin's linkage of modernity to Oblonsky's attitudes – that social mores are to be worked around and subordinated to pleasure, that families are base camps for off-base nooky – undermine one possible reading of Anna Karenina , in which Anna is a martyr in the struggle for the modern sexual freedoms that we take for granted, taken down by the hypocritical conservative elite to which she, her lover and her husband belong.
(18) James Cleverly, MP for Braintree, who supported Johnson’s aborted leadership bid before backing May, said joking about him risked undermining the foreign secretary.
(19) These effects of governmental restrictions on abortion do indeed interfere with the obstetrician's basic goal of providing optimal care for the patient and undermine their efforts to improve maternal and infant health.
(20) Poor crossing undermined Liverpool in the first leg, Klopp had claimed, but the flaw was remedied quickly in the return.
Weaken
Definition:
(v. t.) 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.
(v. t.) To reduce in quality, strength, or spirit; as, to weaken tea; to weaken any solution or decoction.
(v. i.) To become weak or weaker; to lose strength, spirit, or determination; to become less positive or resolute; as, the patient weakened; the witness weakened on cross-examination.
Example Sentences:
(1) Now, as the Senate takes up a weakened House bill along with the House's strengthened backdoor-proof amendment, it's time to put focus back on sweeping reform.
(2) The use of functional test with the ACTH administration demonstrated organic affection of the CNS to sharply aggravate the weakening and even the exhaustion of the functional reserves of the glomerular and the reticular zones of the adrenal cortex developing during thyrotoxicosis, and also the reserve possibilities of the sympathico-adrenal system.
(3) If Lagarde had been placed under formal investigation in the Tapie case, it would have risked weakening her position and further embarrassing both the IMF and France by heaping more judicial worries on a key figure on the international stage.
(4) The stronger negative potentials may weaken electrostatic receptor interactions and, thereby, cause the trans(E)-isomers to be less active than cis(Z)-isomers.
(5) We found that the closer location of Mg2+ to the beta-phosphoryl group than to the alpha- or gamma-phosphoryl group was effective in weakening the P-O bond at which the cleavage of ATP catalyzed by most enzymes takes place.
(6) Extracellular potassium increases this component of the potassium current as a result of weakening of its inactivation.
(7) Moreover, the effect of its administration gradually weakens with repeating of the stress inducing experiment, and propiopromazine itself may act as a stress inducing factor.
(8) He was accused of disrespecting the FA Cup with such a weakened team but he mounted a strong defence, referencing the club’s seven injuries that have left him with only 13 fit senior outfield players.
(9) sec.-1); b) an enhancement of fast (15-25 Hz) oscillations in the cortical spontaneous electrical activity and weakening and modification of the effects of the blockader of synthesis of MA-alpha-methyl-dioxiphenylalanine.
(10) The muscle weakening procedures by the traditional recession should be avoided.
(11) Repeated flashes above a few per second do not so much cause fatigue of the VEPs as reduce or prevent them by a sustained inhibition; large late waves are released as a rebound excitation any time the train of flashes stops or is delayed or sufficiently weakened.
(12) Levin and Merkley said Wall Street has successfully managed to weaken the rule.
(13) Any process which weakens the cartilaginous endplate or the subchondral cancellous bone may predispose to the development of Schmorl's nodes.
(14) The dumping-syndrome is a severe complication of gastric surgery after operations which destroy or weaken the sphincter mechanism of the pylorus.
(15) The destabilization of the red cell membrane skeleton in the presence of crude iHCR is caused by release of hemin, which lowers the stability of membrane skeleton by weakening the spectrin-protein 4.1-actin interaction.
(16) We therefore conclude that in postrigor muscles, paratropomyosin is released from the A-I junction region following the increase in the sarcoplasmic calcium ion concentration to 10(-4) M, and then binds to thin filaments, which results in weakening of rigor linkages formed between actin and myosin.
(17) Companies like Origin and EnergyAustralia are pushing to weaken the target not, as they like to claim, because that would be good for customers, but because a weaker target is better for their bottom line,” Connor said.
(18) The centrally generated ;effort' or direct voluntary command to motoneurones required to lift a weight was studied using a simple weight-matching task when the muscles lifting a reference weight were weakened.
(19) One possibility is that the membrane of dystrophic muscle is weakened and becomes leaky to Ca2+.
(20) David Cameron thought that the SNP would weaken Labour north of the border.