brittle

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.

When stretched, solids elongate until they reach a critical stress point, then break suddenly in a process known as brittle fracture.

From Science Daily • Mar. 30, 2026

The old revolutionary story has grown brittle, feeble.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 26, 2026

Running her hand through her brittle white hair, she mimed heating water on a gas stove to wash herself in the cold mornings.

From Barron's • Jan. 28, 2026

We move in a familiar loop: outrage at dysfunction, ritualized critique, then a quiet hope that the same brittle systems will somehow stabilize themselves when the stakes get high.

From Salon • Jan. 24, 2026

That from somewhere inside that brittle shell—in that girl made vacant by the fiction of invincibility—there was a spark left.

From "Educated" by Tara Westover