akrasia

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akrasia

  • /əˈkɹeɪ.zɪ.ə/ UK
  • /-kɹæ-/ UK
  • /əˈkɹeɪ.zi.ə/ US

Sounds like acrasia

Where it comes from

Learned borrowing from Ancient Greek ᾰ̓κρᾰσῐ́ᾱ (ăkrăsĭ́ā), a variant of ᾰ̓κρᾰ́τειᾰ (ăkrắteiă, “lack of power, debility, impotence; lack of self-control, incontinence; self-indulgence”), from ἀκρατής (akratḗs, “having no authority, powerless; unable to exercise self-control, incontinent”) + -ῐ́ᾱ (-ĭ́ā, suffix forming feminine abstract nouns). Ἀκρατής (Akratḗs) is derived from ᾰ̓- (ă-, prefix forming terms having a sense opposite to the stems or words to which it is attached) + κρᾰ́τος (krắtos, “might, strength; dominion, power”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kret- (“insight, intelligence; strength”)) + -ής (-ḗs, suffix forming third-declension adjectives). Doublet of acratia.

noun akrasias · acrasia

  1. uncountable Lack of physical or (especially) mental strength; poor willpower; also, the tendency to act contrary to one's better judgment; (countable) an instance of this. His [Homer's] Olympian gods live by passion and propensity rather than by principle; their besetting sin is a fault of inclination to what they like, not of absolute malignity; it belongs to the akrasia, not the absolute kakia of Aristotle.

    Similar: weakness, ineptitude

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MLA

"akrasia." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/akrasia. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

APA

akrasia. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/akrasia

Chicago

"akrasia." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/akrasia.

BibTeX
@misc{akrasia_2026,
  title = {akrasia},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/akrasia},
  urldate = {2026-11-06}
}