brittle

adjective

1. 1

   Inflexible; liable to break, snap, or shatter easily under stress, pressure, or impact.

   Near-synonyms: crackly, (technical) brash

   Cast iron is much more brittle than forged iron.

   A diamond is hard but brittle.

   'Do you suppose our convent, and I too, Are insufficient, then, to pray for you? Thomas, that joke's not good. Your faith is brittle.

2. 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. 3

   Tending to fracture in a conchoidal way; capable of being knapped or flaked.

4. 4

   Emotionally fragile, easily offended.

   What a brittle person! A little misunderstanding and he's an emotional wreck.

5. 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. 6

   informalCharacterized by dramatic swings in blood sugar level.

noun

1. 1

   A confection of caramelized sugar and nuts.

   As a child, my favorite candy was peanut brittle.

2. 2

   Anything resembling this confection, such as flapjack, a cereal bar, etc.

verb

1. 1

   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.

   Her heart fluttered, then stilled when May snapped the image away and her voice brittled.

2. 2

   obsoleteTo 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”[.]

Forms

plural

brittles

comparative

brittler, more brittle

superlative

brittlest, most brittle

past tense

brittled

past participle

brittled

present participle

brittling

third person singular

brittles