Word.ws English Dictionary

frayle

frayle is the obsolete spelling of frail.

Meaning of frail

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...
  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
  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.

See all 12 meanings of frail

Forms of frayle

comparativemore frayle
superlativemost frayle

Questions about frayle

What is frayle the obsolete spelling of?
Frayle is the obsolete spelling of frail.

Words near frayle in the dictionary

  1. Frayers
  2. frayest
  3. frayeth
  4. fraying
  5. frayings
  6. frayle
  7. Frayn
  8. frayne
  9. frayproof
  10. Frayre
  11. Frayres

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: frayle (page history and authors); frail (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: “frayle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/frayle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.