vulnerable
This country has the infrastructure to address our energy vulnerability.
She has recently lost her mother, increasing her emotional vulnerability.
The vote exposed vulnerabilities in the election process.
The characters show their fears and vulnerabilities.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Weakness and vulnerability
Achilles heel
asthenia
at a low ebbidiom
atonic
atony
fragile
fragility
frail
glass jaw
helpless
shakily
shakiness
shaky
sitting duck
sitting target
weakling
weakly
weakness
weedy
wetly

Examples of vulnerability

vulnerability
Predicting depression in women : the role of past and present vulnerability.
For example, pre-adaptation to cold may protect against subsequent exposure to ionizing radiation (positive acclimation), but may increase vulnerability to hypoxia (negative acclimation).
Effectiveness of targeting the vulnerability factors of depression in cognitive therapy.
Anything that worsens a population's economic well-being has the effect of increasing vulnerability to disease as well as to external pressures.
The vulnerability is specific to photoreceptors; other retinal neurons appeared resistant to the exposures tested.
Global inequality also increases the political, economic, and environmental vulnerability of especially small states and less developed countries, due to their lack of financial capacity.
Our analysis indicates that the overwhelming majority of attacks are the result of malformed input exploiting a software vulnerability of a network-attached process.
Researchers have begun to trace the key dimensions of such stress, but also to understand individual and family differences that may moderate vulnerability to stress.
The important question is exactly how much surplus production was possible, what level of institutional complexity could be maintained, and what vulnerabilities emerged.
In summary, biological vulnerability to depressive symptoms and disorders appears to be greater in later life compared to midlife.
It is important, then, to study the range of disruptive behaviors and factors that reinforce a young child's vulnerability.
This transition might therefore provide an opportunity to observe the operation of both vulnerability and protective processes.
From this basic observation about the vulnerability of unfooted syllables, researchers have made a variety of specific proposals.
On other levels, the two applications of the vulnerability framework revealed interesting commonalities and point to promising possibilities for comparative research.
Old-age vulnerability is increasingly shaped by the monetary resources and needs of care-recipients as well as caregivers.
See all examples of vulnerability
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.