frail

frail¹ weak, fragile

Etymology

The adjective is inherited from Middle English frele, also freel, freyle and frail,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Anglo-Norman freele, also freile,^[5] and Old French fraile, frele,^{[5][6][7][8][9]} from Latin fragilis (“easily broken”),^{[5][6][7][2][10]} from frangō (“to break”) and the suffix -ilis,^[2][10] from Proto-Indo-European *bhreg- (“to break”).^[7][10] It is thus the French-shaped form of fragile, which came directly from Latin;^[7][6] Barnhart calls the two doublets.^[6] In Old French the adjective meant fragile from the 11th century and physically or morally weak from the 12th;^[5] the Anglo-Norman word is recorded from 1086 and also meant transient, corruptible and prone to sin.^[11] Modern French has frêle, and Italian frale was borrowed from Old French.^[5][8][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of a person or the body, weak and subject to suffering, disease or death: 1372, in a lyric from John of Grimestone's collection.^[5] Etymonline gives "morally weak" as the first sense, from the mid 14th century,^[7] Weekley took the oldest sense to be figurative, "unchaste",^[12] and Barnhart dates the adjective to probably about 1350.^[6] Hoad finds it in the 13th century in the derivative frelnes.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Of things, "fragile, easily broken" is recorded from before 1382 in the Wycliffite Bible,^[5] or the late 14th century in Etymonline,^[7] and of abstract things, "transient, liable to decay", from about 1384.^[5] Moral weakness, being unable to resist temptation, is recorded from about 1390, in Piers Plowman.^[5] Chaucer used frele four times and Gower six, in the senses weak, fragile and transitory.^[13] Johnson (1755) defined it as weak, easily decaying, easily destroyed.^[14] From 1752, in Fielding's Amelia, a frail woman was one who was unchaste, and a frail lady a prostitute,^[5] a use the Shorter Oxford marks as archaic.^[8] The noun, frail people in general, is recorded from about 1546;^[5] in the US from 1782 a frail was a promiscuous woman and later any woman,^[5] a slang sense Etymonline dates from 1908, perhaps with Hamlet's "Frailty, thy name is woman" in mind.^[7] Green's Dictionary of Slang has frail one for a prostitute or a mistress from 1826.^[15] In Lincolnshire dialect frail meant weak-minded or timid, and in Kent peevish.^[16]

Timeline

• 1372 – of a person or the body, weak, mortal.^[5]
• before 1382 – of a thing, fragile, easily broken.^[5]
• c. 1384 – of abstract things, transient, liable to decay.^[5]
• c. 1390 – morally weak, unable to resist temptation.^[5] Etymonline dates this sense to the mid 14th century.^[7]
• c. 1546 – noun, frail people as a group.^[5]
• 1752 – of a woman, unchaste.^[5]
• 1782 – noun, chiefly US, a promiscuous woman, later any woman.^[5] Etymonline dates the sense "a woman" to 1908.^[7]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Physically weak and delicate, especially from age or illness: After the operation her grandfather looked very frail.^[17][10][5]
2. Easily broken or destroyed; fragile: a frail wooden footbridge.^[17][10][5]
3. Slight or insubstantial: a frail argument.^[10][2]
4. Morally weak; easily tempted or led astray.^{[17][10][2][5]}
5. (archaic) Of a woman, unchaste.^[8][5]

Noun

1. (slang, chiefly US) A woman or girl.^[8][5][7]

Word family

• frailly
• frailness
• frailty
• overfrail
• unfrail

frail² rush basket

Etymology

The basket is inherited from Middle English fraiel, also frael, freiel and frail,^[18][19] borrowed from Old French fraiel, also frael and freel,^{[5][9][2][12][19]} which the OED, Hoad and the Shorter Oxford call of unknown origin.^[5][9][8] The Anglo-Norman word, recorded from the second half of the 12th century, already meant a rush basket and a basketful as a measure of price.^[11] Merriam-Webster suggests the French noun may come from fraiel in the sense of a piece of vine with the grapes attached, an alteration of flaiel (“flail, whip”);^[2] Weekley derived it from Vulgar Latin fragellum, for Latin flagellum, a young shoot of a vine, and so a withe for making baskets.^[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

A basket, especially one for figs: before 1382, in the Wycliffite Bible, where one basket held good figs and the other bad ones, translating Latin calathus in Jeremiah 24:2.^[18][5][12] A Latin record of 1218 already mentions the carriage of a frail of figs.^[18] Hoad dates the word to the 13th century.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The word also came to mean the quantity of figs or raisins packed in such a basket, between 30 and 75 pounds in the OED,^[5] 32, 56 or 75 pounds of raisins in Merriam-Webster.^[2] Langland used it in Piers Plowman.^[19] The OED quotes Johnson (1755) for a further sense, a rush for weaving baskets.^[5] In the dialects of the southern and Midland counties of England, from Warwickshire to Kent, Sussex, Somerset and Cornwall, a frail was a soft basket of rushes or grass in which workmen carried their tools.^[16]

Timeline

• before 1382 – a rush basket for figs or raisins.^[5][18]
• 1755 – a rush for weaving baskets, in Johnson's dictionary.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A basket made of rushes, used for packing figs, raisins and the like.^[2][5][8]
2. The amount of fruit such a basket holds, from about 30 to 75 pounds.^[2][5]
3. (dialect) A soft rush or grass basket for carrying a workman's tools.^[16]