Noun: frail
| Singular | frail |
| Plural | frails |
Sample Sentences
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She was the roughest, toughest frail, but Minnie had a heart as big as a whale. [1931, Cab Calloway, Irving Mills, Minnie the Moocher:]
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There were five people in the Quirinal bar after dinner, a high-class Italian frail who sat on a stool making persistent conversation against the bartender's bored: “Si … Si … Si,” a light, snobbish Egyptian who was lonely but chary of the woman, and the two Americans. [1934, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, chapter X, in Malcolm Cowley, editor, Tender is the Night […], New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 1951, →OCLC, book IV (Escape: 1925–1929), page 238:]
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‘She's pickin' 'em tonight, right on the nose,’ he said. ‘That tall black-headed frail.’ [1939, Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, Penguin, published 2011, page 148:]
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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.
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SULLIVAN Why don't you go back with the car... You look about as much like a boy as Mae West.
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THE GIRL All right, they'll think I'm your frail. [1941, Preston Sturges, “Sullivan's Travels”, in Five Screenplays, →ISBN, page 77:]
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It’s only a frail. Let’s bust her head in. [1985 January 24, Alan Moore, “Night Olympics, Part One”, in Detective Comics, volume 1, number 549:]
Nouns inflected like frail
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From Middle English frele, fraill, from Old French fraile, from Latin fragilis. Cognate to fraction, fracture, and doublet of fragile. See: Middle English Nouns '
frele', Latin Nouns '
fragilis'.