Frangible
adj, noun ·Uncommon ·College level
Definitions
- 1 Something that is breakable or fragile; especially something that is intentionally made so, such as a bullet.
"For extreme close range training, frangible bullets – those that disintegrate on hitting a hard target – are available. I have found the Winchester frangible loads especially suitable to high-volume training with the 9mm pistol. Frangibles are intended to give peace officers real safety when training at close range with steel reaction targets and vehicles used as range props."
- 1 Able to be broken; breakable, fragile.
"A certain learned and curious Author gives us the following Characters or Properties of Glaſs, whereby it is diſtinguiſh'd from all other Bodies, viz. […] That it is frangible when thin, without annealing."
- 1 capable of being broken wordnet
Example
More examples"A certain learned and curious Author gives us the following Characters or Properties of Glaſs, whereby it is diſtinguiſh'd from all other Bodies, viz. […] That it is frangible when thin, without annealing."
Etymology
From Late Middle English frangible, frangibil, from Middle French frangible, or from Medieval Latin frangibilis, from Latin frangere (from frangō (“to break, shatter”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰreg- (“to break”)) + -ibilis (suffix forming adjectives indicating a capacity or worth of being acted upon).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.