BRITTLE - 14 definitions found
brittle adj 1: having little elasticity; hence easily cracked or fractured or snapped; "brittle bones"; "glass is brittle"; "`brickle' and `brickly' are dialectal" [syn: brittle, brickle, brickly] 2: lacking warmth and generosity of spirit; "a brittle and calculating woman" 3: (of metal or glass) not annealed and consequently easily cracked or fractured [syn: brittle, unannealed] n 1: caramelized sugar cooled in thin sheets [syn: brittle, toffee, toffy] brittle - berob brittle triblet blitter Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition (2003) brittle I. adjective (brittler; brittlest) Etymology: Middle English britil; akin to Old English brēotan to break, Old Norse brjōta Date: 14th century 1. a. easily broken, cracked, or snapped <brittle clay> <brittle glass> b. easily disrupted, overthrown, or damaged ; frail <a brittle friendship> 2. a. perishable, mortal b. transitory, evanescent 3. easily hurt or offended ; sensitive <a brittle personality> 4. sharp <the brittle staccato of snare drums> 5. lacking warmth, depth, or generosity of spirit ; cold <a brittle selfish person> 6. affected with or being a form of type 1 diabetes characterized by large and unpredictable fluctuations in blood glucose level Synonyms: see fragile • brittlely adverb • brittleness noun II. noun Date: 1913 a candy made with caramelized sugar and nuts spread in thin sheets <peanut brittle> Oxford English Reference Dictionary
Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner\'s English Dictionary brittle 1. An object or substance that is brittle is hard but easily broken. Pine is brittle and breaks. ...the dry, brittle ends of the hair. ADJ 2. If you describe a situation, relationship, or someone's mood as brittle, you mean that it is unstable, and may easily change. These incidents suggest the peace in Northern Ireland is still brittle... = fragile ADJ English Explanatory Dictionary brittle ˈbrɪtl adj. & n. --adj. hard and fragile; apt to break. --n. a brittle sweet made from nuts and set melted sugar. øbrittle-bone disease = OSTEOPOROSIS. brittle-star an echinoderm of the class Ophiuroidea, with long brittle arms radiating from a small central body. øøbrittlely adv. brittleness n. brittly adv. [ME ult. f. a Gmc root rel. to OE breotan break up] English-Old English dictionary brittle Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) Brittle \Brit"tle\, a. [OE. britel, brutel, AS. bryttian to dispense, fr. bre['o]tan to break; akin to Icel. brytja, Sw. bryta, Dan. bryde. Cf. Brickle.] Easily broken; apt to break; fragile; not tough or tenacious Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001) brittle adj. Said of software that is functional but easily broken by changes in operating environment or configuration, or by any minor tweak to the software itself. Also, any system that responds inappropriately and disastrously to abnormal but expected external stimuli; e.g., a file system that is usually totally scrambled by a power failure is said to be brittle. This term is often used to describe the results of a research effort that were never intended to be robust, but it can be applied to commercial software, which (due to closed-source development) displays the quality far more often than it ought to. Oppose robust. Soule\'s Dictionary of English Synonyms brittle a. Fragile, crumbling, shivery, frail, frangible, brash, easily broken (into pieces), easily shivered. English Explanatory Dictionary (Synonyms) brittle ˈbrɪtl adj. 1 fragile, frangible, breakable; friable: My fingernails become brittle in the cold and break easily. 2 frail, weak, delicate, sensitive, fragile, insecure: She might seem strong, but she has a very brittle nature and is easily upset. Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 99 Moby Thesaurus words for "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 |
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