Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • That may be broken or cleft; pertaining to breakage or cleavage.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun statistics The value of a distribution for which some fraction of the sample lies below.
  • adjective Describing the quality of a sedimentary stone as it relates to the sediments to cohesively bond without fracturing. A stone with a low fractile strength lacks tensile strength and will crack or crumble under stress or pressure.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From fraction and -ile

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From fracture and -ile

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word fractile.

Examples

  • And I realize KUOW is just a fractile of NPR but they use the same tax-payer facilities affiliated with UW or PLU in Tacoma.

    Sound Politics: The 20 Minute Anti-War Commercial On KUOW 2007

  • Perhaps not surprisingly, Switters, as an erstwhile cyberneticist, had some theories about the bicameral brain, its fractile reflection of a universe steeped in paradox: how, simultaneously and inseparably, it functioned both as a computer running programs and as a program being run, how its mastery of preemphasis often failed to protect it against random signals, viruses, or the meddling of -imps.

    Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates Robbins, Tom 2000

  • Perhaps not surprisingly, Switters, as an erstwhile cyberneticist, had some theories about the bicameral brain, its fractile reflection of a universe steeped in paradox: how, simultaneously and inseparably, it functioned both as a computer running programs and as a program being run, how its mastery of preemphasis often failed to protect it against random signals, viruses, or the meddling of -imps.

    Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates Robbins, Tom 2000

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.