brittle

Meaning

Adj

1. Inflexible; liable to break, snap, or shatter easily under stress, pressure, or impact; crackly.
2. Not physically tough or tenacious; apt to break or crumble when bending.
3. Tending to fracture in a conchoidal way; capable of being knapped or flaked.
4. Emotionally fragile, easily offended.
5. 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.
6. (informal, proscribed) Characterized by dramatic swings in blood sugar level.

Noun

1. (uncountable, usually) A confection of caramelized sugar and nuts.
2. (broadly, uncountable, usually) Anything resembling this confection, such as flapjack, a cereal bar, etc.

Verb

1. (intransitive) To become brittle.
2. (obsolete, transitive) To gut.

Synonyms

fragile

crisp

breakable

crunchy

frail

delicate

friable

easily broken

crumbly

frangible

crispy

weak

toffee

toffy

dry

sensitive

flimsy

infirm

unannealed

light

feeble

brickle

brickly

slight

crimp

soft

stone

🪨

taffy

tender

tender-hearted

threadbare

twisted

unemotional

unfeeling

well done

wintry

apt to break

be broken

shattery

easily cracked

be sprained

be brittle

be fragile

easily damaged

cold-eyed

non-coherent

lacking cohesion

non-cohesive

bleak

britlle

Translations

spröde

fragile

fragile

cassant

frágil

quebradizo

brüchig

zerbrechlich

friabile

breekbaar

trencadís

quebradiça

εύθραστος

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ˈbɹɪtl̩/

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English: britel

Inherited from Old English: *brytel

In summary

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.