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-, devolved from Proto-Indo-European *bhri- and also turns up in Russan brit' "to shave" and English break. (Today we would like to publically and sincerely thank Paul Ogden, Luciano Eduardo de Oliveira, and Mary Jane Stoneburg for proofreading and editing all our Good Words. I, of course, remain solely responsible for any remaining errors.)

[Philip Hudson]

As an old farm boy, friable means soil that is easily worked. This fits in with the crumbly definition. In my native part of Texas, south of San Antonio, the rich brown sandy loam is definitely friable. In my present home, Dallas County, Texas, the mucky, black-gumbo soil, though rich, is far from friable.

I know only a very few people who know, and only one in addition to myself who uses, this word. It is one we should cultivate, preferably in friable soils.

Philip Hudson