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Brittle
Definitions
- 1 Inflexible; liable to break, snap, or shatter easily under stress, pressure, or impact.
"Near-synonym: crackly"
- 2 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."
- 3 Tending to fracture in a conchoidal way; capable of being knapped or flaked.
- 4 Emotionally fragile, easily offended.
"What a brittle personality! A little misunderstanding and he's an emotional wreck."
- 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.
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- 6 Characterized by dramatic swings in blood sugar level. informal, proscribed
- 1 having little elasticity; hence easily cracked or fractured or snapped wordnet
- 2 (of metal or glass) not annealed and consequently easily cracked or fractured wordnet
- 3 lacking warmth and generosity of spirit wordnet
- 1 A surname.
- 1 A confection of caramelized sugar and nuts. uncountable, usually
"As a child, my favorite candy was peanut brittle."
- 2 caramelized sugar cooled in thin sheets wordnet
- 3 Anything resembling this confection, such as flapjack, a cereal bar, etc. broadly, uncountable, usually
- 1 To become brittle. intransitive
"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."
- 2 To gut. obsolete, transitive
"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”[.]"
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.
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.
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.
From a diminutive form of Brett.
See also for "brittle"
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Unscramble this word: brittle