fragile

5 definitions found

fragile - Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 :

  Fragile \Frag"ile\, a. [L. fragilis, from frangere to break; cf.
     F. fragile. See Break, v. t., and cf. Frail, a.]
     Easily broken; brittle; frail; delicate; easily destroyed.
     [1913 Webster]
  
           The state of ivy is tough, and not fragile. --Bacon.
  
     Syn: Brittle; infirm; weak; frail; frangible; slight. --
          Frag"ile*ly, adv.
          [1913 Webster]

fragile - WordNet (r) 2.1 (2005) :

  fragile
      adj 1: easily broken or damaged or destroyed; "a kite too
             delicate to fly safely"; "fragile porcelain plates";
             "fragile old bones"; "a frail craft" [syn: delicate,
             fragile, frail]
      2: vulnerably delicate; "she has the fragile beauty of youth"
      3: lacking substance or significance; "slight evidence"; "a
         tenuous argument"; "a thin plot"; a fragile claim to fame"
         [syn: flimsy, fragile, slight, tenuous, thin]

fragile - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  brittle
  fragile
  
     <jargon> Said of software that is functional but easily
     broken by changes in operating environment or configuration,
     or by any minor tweak to the software itself.  Also, any
     system that responds inappropriately and disastrously to
     abnormal but expected external stimuli; e.g. a file system
     that is usually totally scrambled by a power failure is said
     to be brittle.  This term is often used to describe the
     results of a research effort that were never intended to be
     robust, but it can be applied to commercially developed
     software, which displays the quality far more often than it
     ought to.
  
     Opposite of robust.
  
     [Jargon File]
  
     (1995-05-09)
  

fragile - Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) :

  fragile
   adj.
  
     Syn brittle.
  

fragile - Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 :

  93 Moby Thesaurus words for "fragile":
     breakable, brittle, brittle as glass, capricious, changeable,
     cheap-jack, cobwebby, corruptible, crackable, crisp, crispy,
     crumbly, crushable, dainty, deciduous, decrepit, delicate,
     delicately weak, dying, effeminate, ephemeral, evanescent, fading,
     feeble, fickle, fissile, fleeting, flimsy, flitting, fly-by-night,
     flying, fracturable, frail, frangible, friable, fugacious,
     fugitive, gimcrack, gimcracky, gossamery, impermanent, impetuous,
     impulsive, inconstant, infirm, insubstantial, jerry, jerry-built,
     lacerable, light, lightweight, momentary, mortal, mutable,
     namby-pamby, nondurable, nonpermanent, papery, passing,
     pasteboardy, perishable, puny, rickety, scissile, shaky,
     shatterable, shattery, shivery, short, short-lived, sissified,
     sleazy, slight, splintery, tacky, temporal, temporary, tenuous,
     thin, transient, transitive, transitory, undurable, unenduring,
     unsound, unstable, unsubstantial, volatile, vulnerable, weak,
     weakly, wispy, womanish