brittle

• adj.壊れやすい、傷つきやすい；いらいらしやすい

語源的にはbreakと同じ。-le、繰り返す。

brittle

brittle: [14] Brittle probably comes from a Germanic stem *brut- ‘break’, which had several descendants in Old English (including the verbs brēotan and gebryttan ‘break’) that did not survive the Norman Conquest. It came in a more than usual profusion of spellings in Middle English (bretil, brutil, etc), not all of which may be the same word; brottle, for instance, current from the 14th to the 16th century, may well have come from the aforementioned Old English brēotan. There is also the synonymous brickle [15], which survived dialectally into the 20th century; this is related ultimately to break.

brittle (adj.)

late 14c., britel, perhaps from an unrecorded Old English adjective *brytel, related to brytan "to crush, pound, to break to pieces," from Proto-Germanic stem *brutila- "brittle," from *breutan "to break up" (cognates: Old Norse brjota "to break," Old High German brodi "fragile"), from PIE *bhreu- "to cut, break up" (see bruise (v.)). With -le, suffix forming adjectives with meaning "liable to."

1. This may help to undermine the brittle truce that currently exists.

これは火に油を注いで、現在の脆弱で不安定な休戦局面を破壊するかもしれない。

2.The pizza base retains its crispness without becoming brittle .

ピザの生地はまだカリカリしていて、割れやすくもなっていない。

3.These incidents suggest the peace in Northern Ireland is still brittle .

これらの事件は、北アイルランドの平和が依然として脆弱であることを示している。

4.Myrtle gave a brittle laugh.

マーテルは冷ややかに笑った。

5.The pond was covered in a brittle layer of ice.

池は壊れやすい氷で覆われている。