# frail
## English
### Pronunciation

* IPA: /fɹeɪl/
* Audio (General Australian):(file)
* Rhymes: -eɪl

### Etymology 1

From Middle English frele, fraill, from Old French fraile, from Latin fragilis. Cognate to fraction, fracture, and doublet of fragile.

#### Adjective

frail (comparative frailer, superlative frailest)
* Easily broken physically; not firm or durable; liable to fail and perish.
** c. 1587–1588, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire, London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act I, scene i:Returne with ſpeed, time paſſeth ſwift away, Our life is fraile, and we may dye to day.
** 1831, John James Audubon, Ornithological Biography: Volume 1: Blue-grey Fly-catcher:Its nest is composed of the frailest materials, and is light and small in proportion to the size of the bird
* Weak; infirm.
** 1993, John Banville, Ghosts:Frail smoke of morning in the air and a sort of muffled hum that is not sound but is not silence either.
** 1922, Isaac Rosenberg, Dawn:O as the soft and frail lights break upon your eyelids
* (medicine) In an infirm state leading one to be easily subject to disease or other health problems, especially regarding the elderly.
* Mentally fragile.
* Liable to fall from virtue or be led into sin; not strong against temptation; weak in resolution; unchaste.

##### Derived terms

* frailish
* frailly
* frailness
* frail sister
* frailsome
* overfrail
* prefrail
* unfrail

##### Related terms

* fractal
* fraction
* fracture
* fragile
* fragility
* frailty

##### Translations

    The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

#### Noun

frail (plural frails)
* (dated, slang) A girl.
** 1931, Cab Calloway, Irving Mills, Minnie the Moocher:She was the roughest, toughest frail, but Minnie had a heart as big as a whale.
** 1934, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night: A Romance, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC; republished as chapter X, in Malcolm Cowley, editor, Tender is the Night: A Romance [...] With the Author’s Final Revisions, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951, →OCLC, book IV (Escape: 1925–1929), page 238:There were five people in the Quirinal bar after dinner, a high-class Italian frail who sat on a stool making persistent conversation against the bartender's bored: “Si … Si … Si,” a light, snobbish Egyptian who was lonely but chary of the woman, and the two Americans.
** 1939, Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, Penguin, published 2011, page 148:‘She's pickin' 'em tonight, right on the nose,’ he said. ‘That tall black-headed frail.’
** 1941, Preston Sturges, “Sullivan's Travels”, in Five Screenplays, →ISBN, page 77:Sullivan, the girl and the butler get to the ground. The girl wears a turtle-neck sweater, a cap slightly sideways, a torn coat, turned-up pants and sneakers. SULLIVAN Why don't you go back with the car... You look about as much like a boy as Mae West. THE GIRL All right, they'll think I'm your frail.

#### Verb

frail (third-person singular simple present frails, present participle frailing, simple past and past participle frailed)
* To play a stringed instrument, usually a banjo, by picking with the back of a fingernail.

### Etymology 2

From Middle English frayel, from Old French frael, fraiel, of unknown origin; possibly a dissimilatory variant of flael, flaiel (“flail”).

#### Noun

frail (plural frails)
* A basket made of rushes, used chiefly to hold figs and raisins.
* The quantity of fruit or other items contained in a frail.
* A rush for weaving baskets.

### Etymology 3

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

#### Noun

frail (plural frails)
* Synonym of farasola (“old unit of weight”)

#### References

* Henry Yule, A[rthur] C[oke] Burnell (1903) “frail”, in William Crooke, editor, Hobson-Jobson […] , London: John Murray, […].

### Etymology 4
#### Noun

frail (plural frails)
* (England, dialectal, obsolete) Synonym of flail.
** 1948, C. Henry Warren, The English Counties, Essex: Odhams, page 170:The scythe, the sickle and the flail (or "frail", is it is invariably called) - these should surely be incorporated in the county arms, for on their use much of the prosperity of Essex has always rested until now.

#### References

* “frail”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

### Anagrams

* filar, flair