brittleとは意味・読み方・使い方

発音

• IPA^(key): /ˈbɹɪtl̩/
• 韻: -ɪtəl

形容詞

brittle (comparative brittler または more brittle, superlative brittlest または most brittle)

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

   Cast iron is much more brittle than forged iron.

   A diamond is hard but brittle.

   • 1951, Geoffrey Chaucer; Nevill Coghill, transl., The Canterbury Tales: Translated into Modern English (Penguin Classics), Penguin Books, published 1977, page 329:

     '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. 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. (archaeology) Said of rocks and minerals with a conchoidal fracture; capable of being knapped or flaked.
4. Emotionally fragile, easily offended.

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

5. (engineering, computing, of a system) 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. (informal, proscribed)^[1] Diabetes that is characterized by dramatic swings in blood sugar level.

派生語

名詞

brittle (usually uncountable, 複数形 brittles)

1. A confection of caramelized sugar and nuts.

   As a child, my favorite candy was peanut brittle.

2. (by extension) Anything resembling this confection, such as flapjack, a cereal bar, etc.

同意語

• brickle

動詞

brittle (三人称単数 現在形 brittles, 現在分詞 brittling, 過去形および過去分詞形 brittled)

1. (intransitive) To become brittle.
   • 1999, J. Siekmann, ‎Maria T. Pazienza, ‎J. G. Carbonell, Information Extraction: Towards Scalable, Adaptable Systems (page 24)

     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.

   • 2020, Alys Murray, The Magnolia Sisters

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

参考

• break, breakable
• short (adjective)

参照