Adjective: friable
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
Perifrastic
| Comparative | more friable |
| Superlative | most friable |
Sample Sentences
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Spiders had woven their vague trapezes between the friable heads of dead peonies in enormous glass jars streaked with tide marks where the water had evaporated long ago. [1977, Angela Carter, The Passion of New Eve:]
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This light, friable type of material offered excellent insulation against both desert heat and also the cold of darkness during the winter. [1983, Lawrence Durrell, Sebastian, Avignon Quintet edition, Faber & Faber, published 2004, page 1020:]
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Sand has been incorporated to make the soil more friable.
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So while two men under his directions were digging the grave with sticks in the friable granitic soil, he superintended the costume of the other actors in the drama. [1890, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough:]
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It is when asbestos-containing products are friable that hazardous asbestos fibers are likely to be released and sent airborne. [April 1987, Old-House Journal:]
Adjectives inflected like friable
priest-ridden,
unreposed,
evadible,
dissentious,
dissentient,
unforesighted,
egocentrical,
unephemeral,
unennobling,
mensuralist,
flocculent,
unseductive,
whoopsy,
whooshy,
surrogate,
Nicodian,
unrepaired,
prismatoidal,
renorenal,
unseducible, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
Etymology
Borrowed from French friable, from Latin friābilis (“friable”), from friō (“to crumble”). See: French Adjectives '
friable', Latin Adjectives '
friābilis'.