frangible
Able to be broken; breakable, fragile.
Adjective
- Able to be broken; breakable, fragile.
- A certain learned and curious Author gives us the following Characters or Properties of Glaſs, whereby it is diſtinguiſh'd from all other Bodies, viz. […] That it is frangible when thin, without annealing. - 1734,...
- Another object still [of roasting iron ore], is to make the ore more frangible, that it may be easily broken into fragments of a suitable size for smelting. - 1838, W[illiam] W[illiams] Mather, “Iron Ore”, in First...
- Folklorists claim that the superstitious belief that opening an umbrella indoors augurs misfortune has a more recent and utilitarian origin. In eighteenth-century London, when metal-spoked waterproof umbrellas began to...
Origin
From Late Middle English frangible, frangibil, from Middle French frangible, or from Medieval Latin frangibilis, from Latin frangere (from frangō (“to break, shatter”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰreg- (“to break”)) + -ibilis (suffix forming adjectives indicating a capacity or worth of being acted upon).
Forms
Synonyms
Antonyms
infrangible indestructible nonbrittle unbreakable unfragile unfrangible
Related
fractal fraction fracture fragile fragment frangent refrangibility refrangible refrangibleness
Derived
frangibility frangibleness frangibly infrangible nonfrangible unfrangible
Noun
- Something that is breakable or fragile; especially something that is intentionally made so, such as a bullet.
- For extreme close range training, frangible bullets – those that disintegrate on hitting a hard target – are available. I have found the Winchester frangible loads especially suitable to high-volume training with the...
- Is there some law of nature that states that an assassin can only use one kind of ammunition? Couldn't he just as easily load a frangible bullet and a nonfrangible one into his magazine as two frangibles or two regular,...
- Like other lethal-use frangibles, it is designed exclusively for use against soft targets. The "projectile" is composed of tungsten powder encapsulated by a traditional copper jacket. The powdered medium itself does not...