brittle means inflexible; liable to break, snap, or shatter easily under stress, pressure, or impact.
brittle is pronounced /ˈbɹɪtəl/.
Why “brittle” is a great word
Inflexible and liable to break, snap, or shatter easily under stress, pressure, or impact. From Middle English britel, brutel, brotel, from Old English *brytel, *bryttol ("brittle, fragile"), literally "prone to break," equivalent to brit- (akin to Old English brysten "fragment") plus the frequentative suffix -le. Unlike “fragile,” which whispers of exquisite delicacy, or “friable,” which speaks of dry, crumbling disintegration, brittle implies a taut, rigid resistance that gives way all at once with a catastrophic report. It is the dry winter branch cracking in the wind, the cold toffee shattering under a tooth, the precise, crystalline sound of a tensioned mind finally giving way—the tragedy of strength become its own undoing, a failure not of softness but of inflexibility.
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.
adj
- Inflexible; liable to break, snap, or shatter easily under stress, pressure, or impact.“Near-synonym: crackly”
- 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.”
- Tending to fracture in a conchoidal way; capable of being knapped or flaked.
- Emotionally fragile, easily offended.“What a brittle person! A little misunderstanding and he's an emotional wreck.”
- 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.
- Characterized by dramatic swings in blood sugar level.
noun
- A confection of caramelized sugar and nuts.“As a child, my favorite candy was peanut brittle.”
- Anything resembling this confection, such as flapjack, a cereal bar, etc.
verb
- To become brittle.“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.”
- To gut.“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”[.]”
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.
- fragile 90% match — Easily broken, not sturdy; of delicate material. vs brittle →
- frangible 90% match — Able to be broken; breakable, fragile. vs brittle →
- fragility 89% match — The condition or quality of being fragile; brittleness; frangibility. vs brittle →
- frailty 84% match — The condition quality of being frail, physically, mentally, or morally; weakness of resolution; liability to be deceived. vs brittle →
- shard 84% match — A piece of broken glass or pottery, especially one found in an archaeological dig. vs brittle →
- forburst 83% match — To burst asunder; break; shatter. vs brittle →
- perishable 83% match — Liable to perish, especially naturally subject to quick decomposition or decay. vs brittle →
- brisance 82% match — The shattering effect of the energy released in an explosion. vs brittle →