different between frail vs unstable
frail
English
Etymology
Borrowed from Old French fraile, from Latin fragilis. Cognate to fraction, fracture, and doublet of fragile.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /f?e?l/
- Rhymes: -e?l
Adjective
frail (comparative frailer, superlative frailest)
- Easily broken physically; not firm or durable; liable to fail and perish
- 1831, John James Audubon, Ornithological Biography: Volume 1, Blue-grey Fly-catcher
- Its nest is composed of the frailest materials, and is light and small in proportion to the size of the bird
- 1831, John James Audubon, Ornithological Biography: Volume 1, Blue-grey Fly-catcher
- Weak; infirm.
- 1922, Isaac Rosenberg, Dawn
- O as the soft and frail lights break upon your eyelids
- 1922, Isaac Rosenberg, Dawn
- Mentally fragile.
- Liable to fall from virtue or be led into sin; not strong against temptation; weak in resolution; unchaste.
Derived terms
- frailly
- frailness
Related terms
Translations
Noun
frail (plural frails)
- A basket made of rushes, used chiefly to hold figs and raisins.
- The quantity of fruit or other items contained in a frail.
- A rush for weaving baskets.
- (dated, slang) A girl.
- 1931, Cab Calloway / Irving Mills, ‘Minnie the Moocher’:
- She was the roughest, toughest frail, but Minnie had a heart as big as a whale.
- 1939, Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, Penguin 2011, p. 148:
- ‘She's pickin' 'em tonight, right on the nose,’ he said. ‘That tall black-headed frail.’
- 1941, Preston Sturges, Sullivan's Travels, published in Five Screenplays, ?ISBN, page 77:
- Sullivan, the girl and the butler get to the ground. The girl wears a turtle-neck sweater, a cap slightly sideways, a torn coat, turned-up pants and sneakers.
- SULLIVAN Why don't you go back with the car... You look about as much like a boy as Mae West.
- THE GIRL All right, they'll think I'm your frail.
- 1931, Cab Calloway / Irving Mills, ‘Minnie the Moocher’:
Verb
frail (third-person singular simple present frails, present participle frailing, simple past and past participle frailed)
- To play a stringed instrument, usually a banjo, by picking with the back of a fingernail.
References
- frail in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
Anagrams
- filar, flair
frail From the web:
- what frail means
- what frailty means
- what frail means in spanish
- what frailty means in spanish
- what frail elderly
- what frail means in farsi
- what is frail body meaning
- what frail mean in arabic
unstable
English
Etymology
un- +? stable
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /?n?ste?b??/
- Rhymes: -e?b?l
Adjective
unstable (comparative more unstable, superlative most unstable)
- Having a strong tendency to change.
- Fluctuating; not constant.
- Fickle.
- Unpredictable.
- (chemistry) Readily decomposable.
- (physics) Radioactive, especially with a short half-life.
Synonyms
- (having strong tendency to change): labile
- (fluctuating, not constant): instable (rare); see also Thesaurus:unsteady
- (fickle): arbitrary, capricious
- (not held or fixed securely and likely to fall over): tottering, unsteady, wobbly; see also Thesaurus:rickety
Antonyms
- stable
Related terms
- instability
- unstability (rare)
Translations
Verb
unstable (third-person singular simple present unstables, present participle unstabling, simple past and past participle unstabled)
- (transitive) To release (an animal) from a stable.
Anagrams
- abluents, ant-blues, bleaunts, blue ants, tunables, unablest
unstable From the web:
- what unstable element decays fast
- what unstable means
- what's unstable angina
- what unstable isotopes
- what's unstable fracture
- what unstable particle
- what unstable air mass
- what's unstable lie
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