brittle
adj
1 easily cracked, snapped, or broken; fragile
2 curt or irritable
a brittle reply
3 hard or sharp in quality
n
4 a crunchy sweet made with treacle and nuts peanut brittle (C14: from Old English brytel (unattested); related to brytsen fragment, breotan to break) ♦
brittlely, brittly adv
brittle bone disease
n the nontechnical name for →
osteogenesis imperfecta
brittle-star
n any echinoderm of the class Ophiuroidea, occurring on the sea bottom and having five long slender arms radiating from a small central disc
See also →
basket-star