Brittle

How to spell brittle

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce brittle

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does brittle mean?

1. adjectiveHard but liable to break or snap easily rather than bend or stretch.
2. adjectiveLacking warmth or resilience; tense and likely to fail under pressure.

Brittle in a sentence

• The old photographs had turned brittle and yellow with age.

• There was a brittle silence between the two managers after the meeting.

• Cold weather can make plastic pipes brittle enough to crack.

• His confidence proved brittle once the questions grew harder.

Where does brittle come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Brittle traces back to the Old English verb breotan, meaning 'to break' or 'to shatter into pieces'. By the late Middle English period the adjective had settled as britel or britil, describing something so hard and inelastic that it snaps rather than bends. The little ending -le carries the sense of a tendency or disposition, so the word literally paints a picture of a thing 'apt to break'. It shares its breaking ancestry with Old Norse brjota, also meaning 'to break', a reminder of how closely the early Germanic tongues overlapped. The double t in the modern spelling is the usual trap, since the short, stressed vowel before it wants a doubled consonant much as in 'little' and 'kettle'.

How the word is built

• britt- (from Old English breotan: to break)
• -le (adjective suffix indicating tendency)