brittle
Part of speech: adj
noun
verb
Morphological type: derivation
Topics: archaeology
computing
engineering
history
human-sciences
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
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.
Base: brit
Affixes: -le
Inflected forms:
form: brittler
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: more brittle
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: brittlest
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: most brittle
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: brittles
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: brittles
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: brittling
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: brittled
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: brittled
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: Inflexible; liable to break, snap, or shatter easily under stress, pressure, or impact.
pos: adj
examples: Near-synonym: crackly
Cast iron is much more brittle than forged iron.
A diamond is hard but brittle.
'Do you suppose our convent, and I too,
 Are insufficient, then, to pray for you?
 Thomas, that joke's not good. Your faith is brittle.
gloss: Not physically tough or tenacious; apt to break or crumble when bending.
pos: adj
examples: Shortbread is my favorite cold pastry, yet being so brittle it crumbles easily, and a lot goes to waste.
gloss: Tending to fracture in a conchoidal way; capable of being knapped or flaked.
pos: adj
gloss: Emotionally fragile, easily offended.
pos: adj
examples: What a brittle person! A little misunderstanding and he's an emotional wreck.
gloss: 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.
pos: adj
gloss: Characterized by dramatic swings in blood sugar level.
pos: adj
tags: informal
proscribed
gloss: A confection of caramelized sugar and nuts.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
usually
examples: As a child, my favorite candy was peanut brittle.
gloss: Anything resembling this confection, such as flapjack, a cereal bar, etc.
pos: noun
tags: broadly
uncountable
usually
gloss: To become brittle.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: 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.
gloss: To gut.
pos: verb
tags: obsolete
transitive
examples: Not being versed in the terms of English venery, he asked Abbot Ulfketyl what brittling of a deer might mean; and being informed that it was that operation on the carcass of a stag which his countrymen called eventrer, and Highland gillies now “gralloching”[.]
Related words: embrittlement
Derived words: 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
Translations: