fragile

1. 1.

   easily broken or damaged or destroyed

   “a kite too delicate to fly safely”

   “fragile porcelain plates”

   “fragile old bones”

   “a frail craft”

   Synonymsdelicatefrail

   Similarbreakable
2. 2.

   vulnerably delicate

   “she has the fragile beauty of youth”

   Similardelicate
3. 3.

   lacking substance or significance

   “slight evidence”

   “a tenuous argument”

   “a thin plot”

   “a fragile claim to fame”

   Synonymsflimsyslighttenuousthin

   Similarinsignificant

Other forms of fragile

comparative

fragiler·

superlative

fragilest·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about fragile

What does fragile mean?

fragile means "easily broken or damaged or destroyed". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in fragile?

fragile has 2 syllables: fragil-e. The stress falls on "fragil". In IPA it is /ˈfɹædʒəl/.

What is another word for fragile?

Close synonyms include delicate, frail, flimsy, slight, tenuous. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is fragile a common word?

fragile is banded "Common" — everyday vocabulary in speech and writing. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.