friable

1. 1.

   easily broken into small fragments or reduced to powder

   “friable sandstone”

   “friable carcinomatous tissue”

   “friable curds formed in the stomach”

   “crumbly cookies”

   Synonymscrumbly

   Similarbreakable

Questions about friable

What does friable mean?

friable means "easily broken into small fragments or reduced to powder".

How many syllables are in friable?

friable has 3 syllables: fri-a-ble. The stress falls on "fri".

What is another word for friable?

Close synonyms include crumbly. 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 friable a common word?

friable is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.