brittle
Other forms: brittles; brittler; brittlely; brittlest
Something brittle is easily broken. Do you have brittle bones? Then no football or rugby for you.
Besides meaning easily fractured and emotionally cold, brittle is also a type of candy made of cooled sugar. To make peanut brittle, bake the ingredients on a cookie sheet then let the brittle cool into sheets which you break into pieces (and then eat — wreaking havoc with your braces). It's ok to use the adjective brittle freely to describe lots of things that will break easily — such as a heart, a theory, or a poorly equipped army.
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having little elasticity; hence easily cracked or fractured or snapped
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(of metal or glass) not annealed and consequently easily cracked or fractured
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synonyms:
unannealed
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unhardened, untempered
not brought to a proper consistency or hardness
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unhardened, untempered
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caramelized sugar cooled in thin sheets
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types:
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peanut brittle
brittle containing peanuts
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peanut brittle
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lacking warmth and generosity of spirit“a brittle and calculating woman”
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Synonyms:
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coldhearted
lacking in sympathy or feeling
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coldhearted
/ˈbrɪdl/
/ˈbrɪtəl/
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Vocabulary lists containing brittle
Eleven-year-old Olive Miracle Martin searches the Tennessee woods for a magical hummingbird to grant her wish for stronger bones so that she could be a normal middle schooler.
Yusuf Azeem, a twelve-year-old Muslim boy in rural Texas, learns to face heartache and Islamaphobia ahead of the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
In this verse novel, 13-year-old Reha grapples with her identity as an Indian-American while trying to cope with her mother’s illness.
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