Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Readily crumbled; brittle: friable asbestos insulation.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Easily crumbled or pulverized; easily reduced to powder, as pumice.
Wiktionary
- adj. Easily broken into small fragments, crumbled, or reduced to powder.
- adj. of soil Loose and large-grained in consistency.
- adj. Likely to crumble and become airborne, thus becoming a health risk
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Easily crumbled, pulverized, or reduced to powder.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. easily broken into small fragments or reduced to powder
Etymologies
- Latin friābilis, from friō ("to crumble"). (Wiktionary)
- Latin friābilis, from friāre, to crumble. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“It is, however, never justifiable deliberately to break a friable foreign body with the hope that the fragments will be expelled, for these may be aspirated into small bronchi, and cause multiple abscesses.”
Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery
“And then there's non-friable, which is generally found on the inside and does become easily airborne.”
“There's friable, which is generally found on the outside of the buildings and doesn't become easily airborne.”
“Mine don't really hurt, though I've been told I have a "friable" cervix that was fun to hear, and the pap smear always just makes me cringe up - it's not so much that it hurts as much as that it just feels wrong wrong wrong...”
“The kind of asbestos most commonly referenced is "friable" asbestos, which is defined by EPA as asbestos that can be reduced to dust by hand pressure.”
“Given that the manganese is very friable, that is, crumbly, we think that this technique will work. ”
“In the distance, on the low, easy-sloping hills, he saw team after team, and many teams, three to a team abreast, what he knew were his Shire mares, drawing the plows back and forth across, contour-plowing, turning the green sod of the hillsides to the rich dark brown of humus-filled earth so organic and friable that it would almost melt by gravity into fine-particled seed-bed.”
“We are incredibly lucky with the friable, chocolatey soil we inherited from Mary's late husband Don to which we add biodynamic prep 500, cow manure mulch and regular dosings of comfrey and nettles.”
“I place my friable, mortal body here, between it -- it is always an "it"-”
The Huffington Post: Elizabeth Boleman-Herring: Alas for the Egg That Is Greece
“You could have all those beds nicely composted and friable, reading for sowing next April/May ...”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘friable’.
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Coal Mining Terms
Coal mining has engendered fascinating subcultures in industry, labor, music, folklore, environment and energy. It has a rich vocabulary as well, and I've encountered some gorgeous mining words. I...
firedamp, scrip, bituminous, anthracite, company store, blackdamp, brattice, bug dust, tipple, whitedamp, float dust, fly ash and 136 more...
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phrontistery - f
from phrontistery.info
fustilarian, fusillation, fustian, futurology, fusiform, futurition, fusee, fuscous, fusain, furunculoid, futtock, furibund and 418 more...
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Words For Novel (Part 2)
fable, sprite, syphilitic, anvil, wonderstruck, vertigo, bridled, tufted, fettered, savvy, tweed fedora, tryst and 255 more...
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kalidas's Words
crepuscular, mellifluous, ephemeral, diaphanous, zeitgeist, geisterfahrer, infinite, eternal, idyllic, azure, reminiscent, oblivion and 521 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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eesome
Includes any intangible conceivable independently of Hom. Sap.
depthless, overspire, unsteady, thitherward, rile, munchable, covet, pastinaceous, mirtle, slonk, tink, inerrarable and 345 more...
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Nabokov vocabulary
verisimilitude, geminate, pedantic, intervestibular, equilibrist, nictitating, anastomosis, quiddity, torus, cacahuete, undulation, pensum and 135 more...
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ADW2
nudnik, temper, intercalate, cleave, scowl, chapfallen, malapropos, disport, annals, paean, paradisiacal, whet and 362 more...
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Reading Reading
Words from the works of Peter Reading - at least one from each (except the Schwitters-esque erosions, cut-ups etc).
overbright, pimpled, muskiness, effuse, stoup, maul, unlevel, viscid, perfidious, glibly, aloes, drouth and 449 more...
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Madame Bovary
Some good words (chiefly French of origin, and often to do with the medical profession) encountered reading the Aveling translation -- mostly new to me, but a few words that are just worthy of bein...
tulle, argand, friable, corolla, lives of stir, difficile, rime, inveigh, feuilleton, peristyle, refulgence, wainscoting and 98 more...
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-bles
fine find endings
able, amble, bable, cable, cible, coble, dable, fable, gable, gible, tible, table and 241 more...
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bertilak's Words
antidisestablishm..., feldercarb, wainscoting, eleemosynary, oxymoron, fuliginous, libration, lammergeier, saxifrage, ichor, lambent, smaragdine and 414 more...
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...another list...
I've no idea where I got this page full of words, but whatever it is, I want to find it again. May have duplicate words from other lists.
bicameral, aphelion, dirigible, parhelion, flocculus, vernier, corticate, oxalis, pandanus, calabash, plumbago, jonquil and 217 more...
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Grounded Words
an Eckhartian exercise of grinding
grind, grist, refrain, ground, grit, mitochondrion, groats, grout, gruel, great, gruesome, gravel and 162 more...
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Lolita
Words to remember from Nabokov's "Lolita"
concordance, limned, lurid, puerility, variorum, perspicacious, exigency, acrostic, solipsism, mnemosyne, involution, fatidic and 227 more...
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learning
A list of words whose meanings I am learning, either because a) I don't know the meaning b) I know the meaning, but could stand to better appreciate certain inflections or secondary meanings or c) ...
louche, educe, loam, cob, sclerotic, palliate, axial, syndicalist, ecumenical, sally, fatuous, parvenu and 1381 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for friable.
super-logos friable soil is soil that is good to work with. Aug 27, 2008
yarb ...the buttressed wall of orange biscuit-like
dry bricks, crisp, friable...
- Peter Reading, Brabyns Park, from For the Municipality's Elderly, 1974 Jun 22, 2008