Fragile

Fragile (pronounced fraj-uhl (U) or fraj-ahyl (non-U))

(1) Easily broken, shattered, or damaged; delicate; brittle; frail.

(2) Vulnerably delicate, as in appearance.

(3) Lacking in substance or force; flimsy.

1505–1515: From the Middle English fragile (liable to sin, morally weak), from the Middle French fragile, from the fourteenth century Old French fragele, from the Latin fragilis (easily broken) (doublet of frêle), the construct being frag- (variant stem of the verb frangere (break), from the primitive Indo-European root bhreg- (to break) + -ilis.  The -ilis (neuter -ile) suffix was from the Proto-Italic -elis, from the primitive Indo-European -elis, from -lós; it was used to form an adjective noun of relation, frequently passive, to the verb or root.  It was cognate with fraction & fracture and doublet of frail.  The original meaning from circa 1510 (liable to sin, morally weak) by circa 1600 extended to "liable to break" as a back-formation from fragility which was actually an adoption of the sense in Latin.  The transferred sense "of frail constitution" (of persons) dates from 1858.  The companion adjective frail emerged in the mid fourteenth century in the sense of "morally weak", from the twelfth century Old French fraile & frele (weak, frail, sickly, infirm) (enduring in Modern French as frêle), from the Latin fragilis.  The US slang noun meaning "a woman" is documented from 1908 and although there’s no evidence, etymologists have noted Shakespeare's "Frailty, thy name is woman" (Hamlet, Act I, Scene 2).  The comparative fragiler and the superlative fragilest are both correct but the more elegant “more fragile” and “most fragile” tend to be preferred.  Fragile is used usually as an adjective but can be applied as a noun (typically by folk like furniture movers) or in the same way as “exquisite”.  Fragilely is an adverb and fragility is a noun; the noun plural is fragiles.

Words which are either synonyms or close in meaning include delicate, feeble, frail, weak, brittle, crisp, crumbly, decrepit, fine, flimsy, fracturable, frangible, friable, infirm, insubstantial, shivery, slight & unsound.  The antonym most often used to suggest the opposite quality to fragile is “robust” (evincing strength and health; strong).  Robust dates from circa 1545 and was a learned borrowing from circa 1400 Medieval Latin rōbustus (oaken, hard, strong), the construct being rōbus- (stem of rōbur (oak, strength) + -tus (the adjectival suffix).

Lindsay Lohan looking fragile: Lindsay (2019) by Sam McKinniss (b 1985) (left), from a reference photograph taken 22 July 2012, leaving the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood, LA (right).

However, fragile and robust, although often used as antonyms (and in general use usefully so because the meanings are so well conveyed and understood) are really not opposites but simply degrees of the same thing.  In the narrow technical sense an expression of robustness or fragility is a measure of the same thing; a degree of strength.  The traditions of language obscure this but it becomes clear if measures of fragility or robustness are reduced to mathematics and expressed as comparative values in numbers.  It's true that on such a continuum a point could be set at which point something is regarded as no longer robust and becomes defined as fragile (indeed this is the essence of stress-testing) but this doesn't mean one is the antonym of the other.

The opposite of fragile is actually antifragile (the anti prefix was from the Ancient Greek ἀντι- (anti-) (against, hostile to, contrasting with the norm, opposite of, reverse (also "like, reminiscent of"))).  The concept is well known in physiology and part of the object in some forms of strength training is to exploit the propensity of muscles to tear at stress points, relying on the body to repair these tears in a way that doesn’t restore them to their original form but makes them stronger so that if subjected again to the same stress, a tear won’t happen.  It’s thus an act of antifragility, the process illustrated also by the calluses which form on the hands after the skin blisters in response to work.  Fragile and robust merely express points on a spectrum and are used according to emphasize the extent of strength; antifragile is the true opposite.

The idea of antifragile was introduced by Lebanese-born, US-based mathematician and trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb (b 1960) in the book Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder (2012), the fourth of five works which explore his ideas relation to uncertainty, randomness & probability, the best-known and most influential was The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007).  His work was thoughtful, intriguing and practical and was well received although the more accessible writing he adopted for the later volumes attracted criticism from some who felt an academic style more suited to the complex nature of his material; probably few who read the texts agreed with that.  Apart from the ideas and the use to which they can be put, his deconstruction of many suppositions is also an exploration of the rigidities of thought we allow our use of language to create.