weak sister


Also found in: Financial, Idioms, Wikipedia.

weak sister

n. Often Offensive
1. An ineffective or undependable member of a group.
2. A person regarded as timid or indecisive.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

weak sister

n
informal US a person in a group who is regarded as weak or unreliable
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

weak′ sis′ter


n.
1. a vacillating person; coward.
2. a part or element that undermines the whole of something; weak link.
[1855–60]
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
Mentioned in ?
References in classic literature ?
He did persuade them to bring girl- friends for me; but I found them weak sisters, pale and ineffectual alongside the choice specimens he had.
And France, the weak sister of European newspaper reading, can show only a 3.1% fall (0.8% at the quality end of the market).
Example Two: The Mac has been the weak sister of Apple revenue since the fourth quarter of 2009, when the iPhone passed it by.
A series of bad management decisions during the 1990s made the once proud company a weak sister among top U.S.
Monetary policy, he said, was the junior partner, a "weak sister," and could "do nothing other than a weak rear-guard action."
Consequently George's "exemplary coffee" plan was to identify one or more lots of the very best Brazils, then tour some of North America's trendsetting roasters and dealers with these latest incarnations of perfection, encouraging the roasters to evaluate them in their own terms as espressos rather than as a weak sister to more celebrated high-grown Centrals.
While the opera is fundamentally very different from Filumena, Frobisher in its Banff incarnation proved no weak sister to its elder sibling and constitutes an impressive accomplishment for both the opera's creators and performers.
Although AMC was a weak sister to the BigThree auto companies, under George it was a profitable firm, especially with the popular Rambler family car.
Additionally, most who have worked with the 10mm Auto know it is not a weak sister when it comes to power downrange, or energy released inside the pistol.
The newest contributor to the University of Kentucky Press "Religion in the South" series, Coker takes his readers through the origins and development of the Southern prohibition movement, which started as a weak sister to antebellum Northern temperance reform, to the eve of World War I, when it became, he argues, the main impetus for national prohibition.