brittle : Dictionary / Wörterbuch (BEOLINGUS, TU Chemnitz)

English Dictionary: brittle	by the DICT Development Group
4 results for brittle
From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]:
brittle adj having little elasticity; hence easily cracked or fractured or snapped; "brittle bones"; "glass is brittle"; "`brickle' and `brickly' are dialectal" Synonym(s): brittle, brickle, brickly lacking warmth and generosity of spirit; "a brittle and calculating woman" (of metal or glass) not annealed and consequently easily cracked or fractured Synonym(s): brittle, unannealed n caramelized sugar cooled in thin sheets [syn: brittle, toffee, toffy]
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:
Brittle \Brit"tle\, a. [OE. britel, brutel, AS. bryttian to dispense, fr. bre[a2]tan to break; akin to Icel. brytja, Sw. bryta, Dan. bryde. Cf. {Brickle}.] Easily broken; apt to break; fragile; not tough or tenacious
From Jargon File (4.2.0, 31 JAN 2000) [jargon]:
brittle adj. Said of software that is functional but easily broken by changes in operating environment or configuration, or by any minor tweak to the software itself. Also, any system that responds inappropriately and disastrously to abnormal but expected external stimuli; e.g., a file system that is usually totally scrambled by a power failure is said to be brittle. This term is often used to describe the results of a research effort that were never intended to be robust, but it can be applied to commercial software, which (due to closed-source development) displays the quality far more often than it ought to. Oppose {robust}.
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (15Feb98) [foldoc]:
brittle Said of {software} that is functional but easily broken by changes in operating environment or configuration, or by any minor tweak to the software itself. Also, any system that responds inappropriately and disastrously to abnormal but expected external stimuli; e.g. a {file system} that is usually totally scrambled by a power failure is said to be brittle. This term is often used to describe the results of a research effort that were never intended to be robust, but it can be applied to commercially developed software, which displays the quality far more often than it ought to. Opposite of {robust}. [{Jargon File}] (1995-05-09)