frail
Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Contents |
English [edit]
Etymology [edit]
From Old French fraile, from Latin fragilis. Cognate to fraction, fracture, and fragile.
Pronunciation [edit]
Adjective [edit]
frail (comparative frailer, superlative frailest)
- Easily broken; mentally or physically fragile; not firm or durable; liable to fail and perish; easily destroyed; not tenacious of life; weak; infirm.
- Liable to fall from virtue or be led into sin; not strong against temptation; weak in resolution; unchaste.
Related terms [edit]
Translations [edit]
easily broken, mentally or physically fragile
Noun [edit]
frail (plural frails)
- A basket made of rushes, used chiefly for containing figs and raisins.
- The quantity of raisins contained in a frail.
- A rush for weaving baskets.
- (dated, slang) A girl.
- 1931, Cab Calloway / Irving Mills, ‘Minnie the Moocher’:
- She was the roughest, toughest frail, but Minnie had a heart as big as a whale.
- 1939, Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, Penguin 2011, p. 148:
- ‘She's pickin' 'em tonight, right on the nose,’ he said. ‘That tall black-headed frail.’
- 1941, Preston Sturges, Sullivan's Travels, published in Five Screenplays, ISBN 0-520-05442-4, page 77:
- Sullivan, the girl and the butler get to the ground. The girl wears a turtle-neck sweater, a cap slightly sideways, a torn coat, turned-up pants and sneakers.
- SULLIVAN Why don't you go back with the car... You look about as much like a boy as Mae West.
- THE GIRL All right, they'll think I'm your frail.
- 1931, Cab Calloway / Irving Mills, ‘Minnie the Moocher’:
References [edit]
- frail in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
Verb [edit]
frail (third-person singular simple present frails, present participle frailing, simple past and past participle frailed)
- To play a stringed instrument, usually a banjo, by picking with the back of a fingernail.
