anile

Adjective

anile (comparative more anile, superlative most anile)

1. Characteristic of a crone or a feeble old woman.
   • Dr. Wittman, too, was passing over the same ground trodden by Bonaparte in his Syrian expedition, and had an ample opportunity of inquiring its probable object, and the probably success which (but for the heroic defence of Acre), might have attended it ; he was on the theatre of Bonaparte’s imputed...1844, Sydney Smith, The Works of Sydney Smith, “Wittman’s Travels” (Edinburgh Review, 1803), pages 248–249
   • Romanticism, so sanguine and so venturous in its revolutionary youth, grew anile in its premature decrepitude ; mumbled its credos ; cursed its heretics — and died.1880, Robert Alfred Vaughan, Hours with the mystics : a contribution to the history of religious opinion, page 347