brittle
pronunciation
How to pronounce brittle in British English:
UK [ˈbrɪtl]
How to pronounce brittle in American English:
US [ˈbrɪtl]
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- Noun:
- caramelized sugar cooled in thin sheets
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- Adjective:
- having little elasticity; hence easily cracked or fractured or snapped
- lacking warmth and generosity of spirit
- (of metal or glass) not annealed and consequently easily cracked or fractured
Word Origin
- brittle
- brittle: [14] Brittle probably comes from a Germanic stem *brut- ‘break’, which had several descendants in Old English (including the verbs brēotan and gebryttan ‘break’) that did not survive the Norman Conquest. It came in a more than usual profusion of spellings in Middle English (bretil, brutil, etc), not all of which may be the same word; brottle, for instance, current from the 14th to the 16th century, may well have come from the aforementioned Old English brēotan. There is also the synonymous brickle [15], which survived dialectally into the 20th century; this is related ultimately to break.
- brittle (adj.)
- late 14c., britel, perhaps from an unrecorded Old English adjective *brytel, related to brytan "to crush, pound, to break to pieces," from Proto-Germanic stem *brutila- "brittle," from *breutan "to break up" (cognates: Old Norse brjota "to break," Old High German brodi "fragile"), from PIE *bhreu- "to cut, break up" (see bruise (v.)). With -le, suffix forming adjectives with meaning "liable to."
Example
- 1. The damage to a brittle economy will be substantial .
- 2. Still , the approach can be mechanical and brittle .
- 3. It 's made from silicon , which is normally brittle , but this is flexible .
- 4. Brittle nails are indicative of calcium deficiency .
- 5. However , casein-based plastic of this sort is too brittle for general use .