Other forms: debilitating; debilitated; debilitates
To debilitate something is to make it weaker. A bad flu may debilitate your powers of concentration, like the New Year's resolutions that temporarily debilitate bakeries' business.
The verb debilitate traces back to the Latin word debilis, meaning “lame, disabled, crippled.” It’s often used to describe what disability or illness does to a person's health, but it can describe anything that has been weakened, like the sense of community that is slowly debilitated by people working longer hours and the lack of sidewalks that in many towns make it harder to walk around and meet the neighbors.