Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Friable   Listen
Friable

adjective
1.
Easily broken into small fragments or reduced to powder.  Synonym: crumbly.  "Friable carcinomatous tissue" , "Friable curds formed in the stomach" , "Crumbly cookies"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Friable" Quotes from Famous Books



... forceps as near to its cut end as possible, a ligature of catgut or silk is tied round it. When there is difficulty in applying a ligature securely, for example in a dense tissue like the scalp or periosteum, or in a friable tissue like the thyreoid gland or the mesentery, a stitch should be passed so as to surround the bleeding vessel a short distance from its end, in this way ensuring a better hold and preventing ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... among the waves, tortured by storms into misshapen forms and anguished attitudes, patted and petted into fantastic humps and contortions. The strata dip at an angle of about twenty-five degrees, and the stone is friable and defenceless. Soothingly now the water is running over and around these rocks, or whitens their outlines with foam; granting their piteous torsos, in merciful caprice, a day's brief respite from ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... of the stream with the walls of the canyon shaded in, and with the breaks or gullies through these walls reduced to a scale. This shows that the level plain between the encompassing walls ranges from half a mile to a mile in places. The walls of the canyon are composed of friable sandstone, and are usually vertical. Their height is not given with precision. The engraving also shows the outline forms and comparative size of the several structures, with specimens of three varieties of masonry used in the walls. No. 2 shows an alternation of courses of stone ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... the dawn filtered through our tent of boughs I saw him closely wrapped in his grey cloak, His head upon a pile of caked thin leaves Whose life had dried up full two years ago. Their flakes shook in the breath from those moist lips; The vow his kiss would seal must prove, I knew As friable as that pale ashen fritter; It had more body than reason dare expect From that so beautiful creature's best intent. He waking found me no more there; and wanders Through tna's woods to-day Calling at times, or questioning charcoal burners, Till ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... as thoroughly as possible to remove all extraneous impurities. In the cleaning operations care should be taken to scratch or abrade the bran as little as possible, for this reason: The outer coating of the bran is hard and more or less friable. Wherever it is scratched a portion is liable to become finely comminuted in the subsequent reductions, so finely that it is impossible to separate it from the flour by bolting, and consequently the grade of the latter is lowered. The ultimate ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various

... matter how nut shells or fruit pit shells are ground both under- and oversize particles will be produced. The hard, friable character of most of the nut shells makes their reduction to fine size particles less difficult than for tough materials, such as corncobs, or fibrous materials such as woods. Shells from almonds because ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various

... instance magnificent fruit was grown in a garden where the soil was originally made up chiefly of sawdust mixed with sand, drawn on a foundation of sawmill edgings so as to raise it above the water of a swamp. Where one has to contend with such conditions he should make an effort to create a friable soil with a supply of humus by adding the material needed. A very few loads, sometimes even a single load, of clay or sand will greatly change the character of the soil of a sufficient area to grow the one or ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy

... rocks but little elevated above the level of the sea, and having in its centre a lagoon or salt-water lake, which generally communicates by a deep narrow channel with the sea. The ring of rocks is flat on the surface, which is composed of friable soil, and sustains a luxuriant vegetation, chiefly of cocoa-nut palms. It is seldom more than half a mile in breadth between the sea and lagoon, sometimes only three or four hundred yards. The outer margin of the ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous

... may be too sudden, as is well enough shown by our hot sands and gravels; but I apprehend no one will ever fear rendering strong clays too porous and manageable. The object of draining is to impart to such soils the mellowness and dark color of self drained, rich and friable soil. That perfect drainage and cultivation will do this, is a well known fact. I know it in the case of my own garden. How it does so I am not chemist enough to explain in detail; but it is evident the effect is produced by the fibers of the growing ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring

... their pueblos on the plateau and their dwellings by the rivers below in the depths of the canyon and constructed cavate homes for themselves; that is, they excavated chambers in the cliffs where these cliffs were composed of soft, friable tufa. On the face of the cliff, hundreds of feet high and thousands of feet or even miles in length, they dug out chambers with stone tools, these chambers being little rooms eight or ten feet in diameter. Sometimes two or ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell

... river bowlders. The masonry was peculiar, the walls were comparatively thin, and the lower courses were composed of river bowlders, not dressed or otherwise treated, while the upper courses, and presumably also the coping stones, were composed of slabs of sandstone and of a very friable limestone. The latter has disintegrated very much under atmospheric influences. The white areas seen in the illustrations are composed of this disintegrated limestone. The general appearance of the ruin at the present time must not be accepted as its normal condition. ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff

... been planted, and the corn had waved through many generations. It has been demonstrated by an examination of the older crater, that in the great eruption of A.D. 79 Vesuvius first threw up its superficial contents—and, in fact, the very crust of the mountain itself, which, being of a light friable nature, blew over to the more distant city of Pompeii, accompanied by showers of hot water—and it was after this first outbreak that a flood of molten lava poured in a torrent over the nearer city, and enfolded Herculaneum in a bed of rock. There is evidence ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... land-springs from all parts of the walls of the valley, wash down the more soluble portions of earth, and continually waste away the soil. Landslips occur daily during the rainy season; streams of rich mud pour down the valley's slopes, and as the river flows beneath in a swollen torrent, the friable banks topple down into the stream and dissolve. The Atbara becomes the thickness of pea-soup, as its muddy waters steadily perform the duty they have fulfilled from age to age. Thus was the great river at work upon our arrival on its ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... do not know if you were free at the time when my friend, M. Tissot, startled everybody by predicting the collision of an asteroid with the earth? Tut, the silly being—he should have known from the body's response to the spectroscope that its condition was too friable to resist our atmosphere. But I never yet knew an astronomer not imbued with sensationalism they acquire a certain megalomania from their intercourse with space. But, at all events, the people, dreading the destruction of everything, ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... light and friable, and below lay a bed of silicious tufa; therefore, even without tools, the aperture deepened quickly. It soon became evident that a man, or men, clinging to the sides of the "pah," were cutting a passage into its exterior wall. What could be the object? Did they know ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne



Words linked to "Friable" :   breakable, friability



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com