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A foible is a small weakness or a slightly strange habit that someone has, which does not really harm anyone else. Maybe they always check the door twice, or they cannot start work until the desk is perfectly neat. When you call it a foible, you are being kind: you are saying this is a little fault, and we can live with it. It is a rather , educated word; in everyday talk people say a little weakness or a quirk. Though actually, English took it from older French foible, meaning weak — the same French word we also borrowed as feeble, which still means weak. In fencing, the foible is the weaker half of the sword, but the meaning you will meet in ordinary English is the small-fault one.
無傷大雅的小缺點、小毛病
組成From Early Modern French foible (“weak”), today's French faible. English also took that word another way as feeble.
同家族的字
- feeblethe same French word, borrowed twice; feeble still means weak
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
foiblenoun/ˈfɔɪbəl/
- 1
A quirk, idiosyncrasy, frailty, or mannerism; an unusual habit that is slightly strange or silly.
- Try to look past his foibles and see the friendly fellow underneath.
- He knew that this was like the sudden impulse of a madman—incongruous even with his habitual foibles.
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A weakness or failing of character.
- Jesus is reverenced as the one man who has lived unspotted by the world, free from human foibles, able to redeem mankind by his example.
- 3
fencinggovernmenthobbiesPart of a sword between the middle and the point, weaker than the forte.
foibleadj/ˈfɔɪbəl/
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obsoleteWeak; feeble.
- The good Fencing-maſters, in France eſpecially, when they preſent a Foyle or Fleuret to their Scholars, tell him it hath two Parts, one of which he calleth the Fort or ſtrong, and the other the Foyble or weak […]
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。