broken reed
broken reed noun: something or someone very fragile or unreliable.
Noun
broken reed (plural broken reeds)
- Something or someone very fragile or unreliable.
- Lo, thou trustest in the staff of this broken reed, on Egypt; whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it: so is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all that trust in him.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Isaiah 36:6
- Many of the big estates survived. Nor was the peasantry a broken reed in terms of demand for manufactured products.2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 543
broken reed meaning in Kannada
broken reed in Kannada
- ನಂಬಿಕೆಯಿಲ್ಲದುದು, ಅವಿಶ್ವಸನೀಯವಾದುದು, ನಂಬಿಕೆಗೆ ಅರ್ಹವಲ್ಲದುದು, ದೌರ್ಬಲ್ಯ
Forms of broken reed
| plural | broken reeds |
|---|
Origin of broken reed
From broken + reed (with reference to the quotation in 1611, see below).
Questions about broken reed
- What does broken reed mean?
- Broken reed means something or someone very fragile or unreliable.
- What is broken reed in Kannada?
- Broken reed in Kannada is ನಂಬಿಕೆಯಿಲ್ಲದುದು, ಅವಿಶ್ವಸನೀಯವಾದುದು, ನಂಬಿಕೆಗೆ ಅರ್ಹವಲ್ಲದುದು. See Broken reed meaning in Kannada.
- What part of speech is broken reed?
- Broken reed is a noun.
- What is the plural of broken reed?
- The plural of broken reed is broken reeds.
Words near broken reed in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: broken reed (page history and authors); broken reed (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “broken reed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/broken_reed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.