Friable

[Dr. Goodword]

• friable •

Pronunciation: frai-ê-bêl • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: Crumbly, brittle, fragile, easily broken up or broken into small pieces.

Notes: Even though many things, like potato chips, become friable when you fry them, today's Good Word is not semantically related to fry. It is difficult even for the good doctor to imagine a situation where this adjective could be used as an adverb, but the noun is either friability (my favorite) or friableness, the state of a friable object. So what do you call something that can be fried? "Something that can be fried" is all the dictionaries allow us, but fryable is all over the Web and, I bet, a lot of people say it, too.

In Play: Friability usually implies fragility, not the brittleness of peanut brittle: "Ludwig found that all the papers he had stored for years in the attic had yellowed and become very friable." Since things friable are brittle and tend to fall apart on contact, this word may be used figuratively with anything that may be perceived as fragile: "Marjorie's proposal turned out to be rather friable under close scrutiny." Marjorie's proposal could also be friable because it is easily broken into separate pieces or subplans.

Word History: Friable is a word we borrowed from the French, who inherited it from Latin friabilis with the same meaning. This adjective is based on the verb friare "to crumble into pieces". The root, fri, evolved from Proto-Indo-European bhrei-/bhri- "cut, pierce" which also turns up in Welsh briw "cut, wound" and brwydr "battle", Irish bhearradh "shave", Russian brit' "to shave" and britva "razor, Serbian brijati "to shave", Albanian brisk "razor", and English break. (Today I would like to sincerely thank Luciano Eduardo de Oliveira, Jeremy Busch, and Mary Jane Stoneburg, who diligently serve as the editorial board for our Good Words. I, of course, remain solely responsible for any remaining errors.)

[George Kovac]

“Friable” is a word often encountered in property inspection reports to describe the condition of asbestos found in older buildings. Friable asbestos is dangerous and unacceptable. The solution is to either remove the asbestos (the best solution, but often expensive) or to contain and stabilize the asbestos so that it is no longer friable.

I think the word has metaphor possibilities. It could describe the Soviet Union in the late 1980s or the current Republican caucus in the US Congress.

[gwray]

I often think of friable in the context of soil. Good soil for growing plants is friable—not too sandy (it does stick together) and not too much clay (it is easily crumbled).

[David Myer]

Rising to the Good Doctor's challenge to find an adverb, how about "I am friably informed (as opposed to reliably) that the election was rigged"?

And as for friable asbestos, I hear about it everyday. My partner is someone important in the making of Australia's policies on asbestos management. I hear about it; she dreams about it.

[David Myer]

Looking here at the Good Doctor's etymology, I deduce that brittle is actually from the same PIE root - judging anyway by the other languages quoted here.