Why “enervate” is a great word
To deprive of vitality, strength, or vigor; to weaken physically or mentally. From Latin ēnervātus, past participle of ēnervō, from ē- ("out of") + nervus ("sinew, tendon, nerve"), thus literally "to remove the sinews from," first attested in English c. 1600. Unlike "innervate," which supplies with nerves and stimulates activity, or "debilitate," which implies serious, lasting incapacity, enervate describes a subtler, more insidious draining—the slow extraction of the very sinews of will. It is the wilt that follows a day of soulless meetings, the mental fuzz after an argument left unresolved, the particular limpness of a humid afternoon with no prospect of breeze. The word carries its own etymological violence: not merely tired, but unstrung, the essential cables of the self carefully, almost surgically, removed.