brittle

adj

/ˈbɹɪtl̩/

Etymology

From Middle English britel, brutel, brotel (“brittle”), from Old English *brytel, *bryttol (“brittle, fragile”, literally “prone to or tending to break”); equivalent to brit + -le.

inherited from *brytel✻
inherited from britel

Definitions

1
Inflexible
Inflexible; liable to break, snap, or shatter easily under stress, pressure, or impact.
- Near-synonym: crackly
- Cast iron is much more brittle than forged iron.
- A diamond is hard but brittle.
2
Not physically tough or tenacious
Not physically tough or tenacious; apt to break or crumble when bending.
- Shortbread is my favorite cold pastry, yet being so brittle it crumbles easily, and a lot goes to waste.
Tending to fracture in a conchoidal way
Tending to fracture in a conchoidal way; capable of being knapped or flaked.
›+ 8 more definitionsshow fewer
1. 4
  Emotionally fragile, easily offended.
  - What a brittle person! A little misunderstanding and he's an emotional wreck.
2. Poorly error- or fault-tolerant
  Poorly error- or fault-tolerant; having little in the way of redundancy or defense in depth; susceptible to catastrophic failure in the event of a relatively-minor malfunction or deviance.
3. Characterized by dramatic swings in blood sugar level.
4. 7
  A confection of caramelized sugar and nuts.
  - As a child, my favorite candy was peanut brittle.
5. Anything resembling this confection, such as flapjack, a cereal bar, etc.
6. 9
  To become brittle.
  - The project is based on a similar project, the Class project, which was started by the University of Cornell several years ago under the leadership of Stuart Lynn to preserve brittling old books.
  - Her heart fluttered, then stilled when May snapped the image away and her voice brittled.
7. To gut.
8. A surname.

The neighborhood

neighborembrittlement

Derived

brittility, brittle bone disease, brittlebush, brittle cinder, brittle fracture, brittlegill, brittle hair syndrome, brittlely, brittleness, brittle star, brittlestem, brittly, embrittle, nonbrittle, quasibrittle, Sabinas brittle hair syndrome, unbrittle, work-brittle, peanut brittle

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at brittle. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

A definitional loop anchored at brittle. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

7 hops · closes at brittle

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA