frangible
/ˈfran(d)ʒɪb(ə)l
/adjective
1Able to be broken into fragments; brittle or fragile: the frangible skull of an infant figurative she had kept his frangible mind together through many troubled years...
- The flatbread was a ritzy variant on pizza with a thin, frangible crust held together by a liberal serving of melted Brie, and sensibly strewn with cubes of smoked salmon and capers.
- I bought it from the catalog version of the store, and while they're delighted to accept mailed returns, they packed the thing in the most frangible variety of styrofoam, filling the room with a thousand easily-inhaled chunks.
- Again and again, the author's childhood becomes an arena of nostalgia deepening into elegy, the place from which a series of variations on the subject of hard past/soft and frangible present can be generated.
1.1Denoting ammunition designed to disintegrate into very small particles on impact: frangible bullets...
- The company is also working on the development of non-toxic, frangible bullets.
- Barriers International manufactured the alloy pins for the frangible fences.
- In the recent past, frangible bullets have been made according to two general formulas using mixtures of elements in either powdered or solid forms.
Origin
Late Middle English: from Old French, or from medieval Latin frangibilis, from Latin frangere 'to break'.