Brittle

5 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Brittle \Brit"tle\, a. [OE. britel, brutel, AS. bryttian to
     dispense, fr. bre['o]tan to break; akin to Icel. brytja, Sw.
     bryta, Dan. bryde. Cf. {Brickle}.]
     Easily broken; apt to break; fragile; not tough or tenacious.
     [1913 Webster]
  


           Farewell, thou pretty, brittle piece
           Of fine-cut crystal.                     --Cotton.
     [1913 Webster]
  
     {Brittle silver ore}, the mineral {stephanite}.
        [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  brittle
       adj 1: having little elasticity; hence easily cracked or fractured
              or snapped; "brittle bones"; "glass is brittle";
              "`brickle' and `brickly' are dialectal" [syn: {brickle},
               {brickly}]
       2: lacking warmth and generosity of spirit; "a brittle and
          calculating woman"
       3: (of metal or glass) not annealed and consequently easily
          cracked or fractured [syn: {unannealed}]
       n : caramelized sugar cooled in thin sheets [syn: {toffee}, {toffy}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  99 Moby Thesaurus words for "brittle":
     atrophied, breakable, brittle as glass, capricious, changeable,
     cheap-jack, cobwebby, corruptible, crackable, crisp, crispy,
     crumbly, crump, crushable, dainty, deciduous, delicate,
     delicately weak, desiccated, dried-up, dying, effeminate,
     emaciated, ephemeral, evanescent, fading, fickle, fissile,
     fleeting, flimsy, flitting, fly-by-night, flying, fracturable,
     fragile, frail, frangible, friable, fugacious, fugitive, gimcrack,
     gimcracky, gossamery, impermanent, impetuous, impulsive,
     inconstant, insecure, insubstantial, jerry, jerry-built, lacerable,
     light, lightweight, momentary, mortal, mutable, namby-pamby,
     nondurable, nonpermanent, papery, parchmenty, passing, pasteboardy,
     perishable, puny, scissile, sensitive, sere, shatterable, shattery,
     shivery, short-lived, shriveled, shrunken, sissified, sleazy,
     slight, splintery, tacky, temporal, temporary, transient,
     transitive, transitory, undurable, unenduring, unstable,
     unsubstantial, volatile, vulnerable, wasted, weak, wilted, wispy,
     withered, wizened, womanish, wrinkled
  
  

From Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001) [jargon]:

  brittle adj. 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 commercial software, which (due to closed-source development)
     displays the quality far more often than it ought to. Oppose {robust}.
  
  

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  brittle
       
           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)