- 1軟弱、沒骨氣、沒膽識（形容人立場不堅、一被壓就退讓）
If you call someone weak-kneed, you are saying they have no courage and cannot stand firm when it is hard. The picture behind the word is a body: when a person is very afraid, their knees feel soft and shaky, and they cannot stand up straight. So a weak-kneed person gives in — they agree with whoever spoke last, they back down when someone pushes them, they will not say the difficult thing. It is used most often about politicians, bosses, governments and committees: a weak-kneed response, a weak-kneed apology, weak-kneed leaders. It is always an insult, and quite a strong one, though it is a slightly old-fashioned and insult rather than a rude one — you meet it more in newspapers and speeches than in daily chat. Note that it is about moral courage, not about the body. A weak-kneed man may be big and strong. And be careful: the plain phrase 'my knees went weak' usually means fear or shock, and sometimes love, but the adjective weak-kneed is only about character.
組成weak + kneed (knee + -ed, meaning 'having knees of a certain kind'). The whole word paints a person whose knees give way, then uses that picture for character.
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，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。
weak-kneedadj
- 1
Lacking will power or strength of character; timid.
- It is incontrovertible that the children grow up into rotten adults, without virility or stamina, a weak-kneed, narrow-chested, listless breed, that crumples up and goes down in the brute struggle for life.
- What these teenagers are weighing is at the very heart of Gandhian philosophy: "His absolute insistence on nonviolence, which young men see as pussyfooted and weak-kneed and — dare I say — feminine and hence not macho enough," says Guha, the biographer.
- 2
Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see weak, kneed.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。