fragile
Americanadjective
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easily broken, shattered, or damaged; delicate; brittle; frail.
a fragile ceramic container; a very fragile alliance.
-
vulnerably delicate, as in appearance.
She has a fragile beauty.
-
lacking in substance or force; flimsy.
a fragile excuse.
adjective
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able to be broken easily
-
in a weakened physical state
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delicate; light
a fragile touch
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slight; tenuous
a fragile link with the past
Synonym Usage
See frail 1.
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of fragile
First recorded in 1505–15; from Latin fragilis, equivalent to frag- (variant stem of the verb frangere break ) + -ilis -ile
Explanation
If it's delicate and easily broken, like a rare glass vase or the feelings of an overly emotional friend, it's certainly fragile. Back in the 1500s, fragile implied moral weakness. Then around 1600, its definition broadened to mean “liable to break.” It wasn’t until the 19th century that the word started to mean “frail” and was used to describe people. Today we use it to describe things like spider webs, unstable political systems, and insecure egos. Synonyms include flimsy, vulnerable, and brittle.
Vocabulary lists containing fragile
Give Me a Break!: Fract and Frag
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100 SAT Words Beginning with "F"
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100 Great Words from "Fahrenheit 451" -- Part I Vocabulary
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Some have already taken the project to court, fearing their land rights will not be respected, while environmental organisations including Greenpeace argues the refinery "threatens to damage one of East Africa's most fragile coastal ecosystems".
From Barron's ● Oct. 1, 2026
“It makes it more fragile, it makes it more sensitive to any chink in the AI story,” Mayfield said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 29, 2026
LaManna improvised a stand to hold the fragile scroll while rotating it through an X-ray beam.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 26, 2026
"You don't feel safe when those kinds of things are fragile."
From BBC ● Sep. 25, 2026
My fragile heart would not have survived seeing up-to-the-minute photos of my friends and classmates on Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat.
From "Americanized" by Sara Saedi
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
