Brittle

• POS: Adjective, Noun
• HYPHEN: brit=tle

CIDE DICTIONARY

Brittle, a. [OE. britel, brutel, AS. bryttian to dispense, fr. breótan to break; akin to Icel. brytja, Sw. bryta, Dan. bryde. Cf. Brickle.].

 Easily broken; apt to break; fragile; not tough or tenacious<-- contrast to flexible; usually hard -->.  [1913 Webster]
"Farewell, thou pretty, brittle piece
Of fine-cut crystal."  [1913 Webster]

Brittle silver ore, the mineral stephanite.

OXFORD DICTIONARY

Brittle, adj. & n.
--adj. hard and fragile; apt to break.
--n. a brittle sweet made from nuts and set melted sugar.

Idiom

brittle-bone disease = OSTEOPOROSIS. brittle-star an echinoderm of the class Ophiuroidea, with long brittle arms radiating from a small central body.

Derivative

brittlely adv. brittleness n. brittly adv.

Etymology

ME ult. f. a Gmc root rel. to OE breotan break up

THESAURUS

Brittle

atrophied, breakable, brittle as glass, capricious, changeable, cheap-jack, cobwebby, corruptible, crackable, crisp, crispy, crumbly, crump, crushable, dainty, deciduous, delicate, delicately weak, desiccated, dried-up, dying, effeminate, emaciated, ephemeral, evanescent, fading, fickle, fissile, fleeting, flimsy, flitting, fly-by-night, flying, fracturable, fragile, frail, frangible, friable, fugacious, fugitive, gimcrack, gimcracky, gossamery, impermanent, impetuous, impulsive, inconstant, insecure, insubstantial, jerry, jerry-built, lacerable, light, lightweight, momentary, mortal, mutable, namby-pamby, nondurable, nonpermanent, papery, parchmenty, passing, pasteboardy, perishable, puny, scissile, sensitive, sere, shatterable, shattery, shivery, short-lived, shriveled, shrunken, sissified, sleazy, slight, splintery, tacky, temporal, temporary, transient, transitive, transitory, undurable, unenduring, unstable, unsubstantial, volatile, vulnerable, wasted, weak, wilted, wispy, withered, wizened, womanish, wrinkled

ROGET THESAURUS

Brittle

Brittleness

N brittleness, fragility, friability, frangibility, fissibility, house of cards, house of glass, brittle, brash, breakable, weak, frangible, fragile, frail, gimcrack, shivery, fissile, splitting, lacerable, splintery, crisp, crimp, short, brittle as glass.