Word.ws English Dictionary

frail

/fɹeɪl/

frail adjective: easily broken physically; not firm or durable; liable to fail and perish.

Adjective

frail (comparative frailer, superlative frailest)

  1. Easily broken physically; not firm or durable; liable to fail and perish.
    • Returne with ſpeed, time paſſeth ſwift away,
      Our life is fraile, and we may dye to day.c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC...
    • Its nest is composed of the frailest materials, and is light and small in proportion to the size of the bird1831, John James Audubon, Ornithological Biography: Volume 1: Blue-grey Fly-catcher
  2. Weak; infirm.
    • Frail smoke of morning in the air and a sort of muffled hum that is not sound but is not silence either.1993, John Banville, Ghosts
    • O as the soft and frail lights break upon your eyelids1922, Isaac Rosenberg, Dawn
  3. In an infirm state leading one to be easily subject to disease or other health problems, especially regarding the elderly.
  4. Mentally fragile.
  5. Liable to fall from virtue or be led into sin; not strong against temptation; weak in resolution; unchaste.

Noun (1)

frail (plural frails)

  1. (dated, slang) A girl.
    • She was the roughest, toughest frail, but Minnie had a heart as big as a whale.1931, Cab Calloway, Irving Mills, Minnie the Moocher
    • There were five people in the Quirinal bar after dinner, a high-class Italian frail who sat on a stool making persistent conversation against the bartender's bored: “Si … Si … Si,” a light, snobbish Egyptian who was lonely but chary of the woman, and the two Americans.1934, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, chapter X, in Malcolm Cowley, editor, Tender is the Night […], New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 1951, →OCLC, book IV (Escape: 1925–1929), page 238

Verb

frail (third-person singular simple present frails, present participle frailing, simple past and past participle frailed)

  1. To play a stringed instrument, usually a banjo, by picking with the back of a fingernail.

Noun (2)

frail (plural frails)

  1. A basket made of rushes, used chiefly to hold figs and raisins.
  2. The quantity of fruit or other items contained in a frail.
  3. A rush for weaving baskets.

Noun (3)

frail (plural frails)

  1. Synonym of farasola (“old unit of weight”).
    Synonyms:
    farasola

Noun (4)

frail (plural frails)

  1. (England, dialectal, obsolete) Synonym of flail.
    • The scythe, the sickle and the flail (or "frail", is it is invariably called) - these should surely be incorporated in the county arms, for on their use much of the prosperity of Essex has always rested until now.1948, C. Henry Warren, The English Counties, Essex: Odhams, page 170
    Synonyms:
    flail

frail meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

frail in Hindi

easily broken physically
भंगुर bhaṅgur
weak, infirm
दुर्बल durbal

frail in Tamil

பலவீனமான, நலிவுற்ற தோற்றம், மெலிந்த

frail in Urdu

frail
دربل durbal

frail in Bengali

দুর্বল, ভঙ্গুর, স্বাস্থ্যহীন
More languagesFewer languages
frail in Malayalam
ദുർബ്ബലമായ, ആരോഗ്യമില്ലാത്ത, പേലവം, ശോഷിച്ച
frail in Kannada
ತೀರಾ ದುರ್ಬಲ, ಅಶಕ್ತ, ಅಲ್ಪಾರೋಗ್ಯದ, ಸೂಕ್ಷ್ಮ ಪ್ರಕೃತಿಯ

Examples of frail in a sentence

  • After losing my job, there's frail hope of affording my world cruise.
  • Frail, birdlike wrists and no muscle anywhere on his tiny frame.
  • Also, a larger percentage of ailing outgoers than frail recluses would consider rebates.

All 40 example sentences with frail

Synonyms of frail

Forms of frail

Adjective
comparativefrailer
superlativefrailest
Noun
pluralfrails
Verb
third-person singular presentfrails
present participlefrailing
past participlefrailed
pastfrailed

Origin of frail

From Middle English frele, fraill, from Old French fraile, from Latin fragilis. Cognate to fraction, fracture, and doublet of fragile.

From Middle English frayel, from Old French frael, fraiel, of unknown origin; possibly a dissimilatory variant of flael, flaiel (“flail”).

Words formed from frail

Phrases with frail

Words that rhyme with frail

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about frail

What does frail mean?
Frail means easily broken physically; not firm or durable; liable to fail and perish.
What is frail in Hindi?
Frail in Hindi is भंगुर (bhaṅgur), दुर्बल (durbal). See Frail meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is frail?
Frail can be an adjective, a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce frail?
Frail is pronounced /fɹeɪl/.

Words near frail in the dictionary

  1. fraidy-cat
  2. fraidy-cats
  3. fraight
  4. Fraijo
  5. Fraijos
  6. frail
  7. frail sister
  8. frail sisters
  9. fraile
  10. frailed
  11. frailejon

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: frail (page history and authors); frail (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); دربل (Urdu) (page history and authors); Frail (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); frail (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); frail (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-frail.ogg.

Cite this entry: “frail.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/frail. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.