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Frail vs Rickety - What's the difference?

frail | rickety | Related terms |

Frail is a related term of rickety.


As adjectives the difference between frail and rickety

is that frail is easily broken; mentally or physically fragile; not firm or durable; liable to fail and perish; easily destroyed; not tenacious of life; weak; infirm while rickety is of an object: not strong or sturdy, as because of poor construction or upkeep; not safe or secure; giddy; shaky.

As a noun frail

is a basket made of rushes, used chiefly for containing figs and raisins.

As a verb frail

is to play a stringed instrument, usually a banjo, by picking with the back of a fingernail.

frail

English

Adjective

(er)
  • Easily broken; mentally or physically fragile; not firm or durable; liable to fail and perish; easily destroyed; not tenacious of life; weak; infirm.
  • Liable to fall from virtue or be led into sin; not strong against temptation; weak in resolution; unchaste.

    • Related terms

    * fractal * fraction * fractional * fracture * fragile * fragility * frailly * frailness * frailty

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A basket made of rushes, used chiefly for containing figs and raisins.
  • The quantity of raisins contained in a frail.
  • A rush for weaving baskets.
  • (dated, slang) A girl.
  • * 1931 , (Cab Calloway) / (Irving Mills), ‘Minnie the Moocher’:
    • She was the roughest, toughest frail , but Minnie had a heart as big as a whale.
  • * 1933 , , , edition 1, Book 2, Chapter XXII:
    • 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.
  • * 1939 , (Raymond Chandler), The Big Sleep , Penguin 2011, p. 148:
    • ‘She's pickin' 'em tonight, right on the nose,’ he said. ‘That tall black-headed frail .’
  • * 1941 , Preston Sturges, '', published in ''Five Screenplays , ISBN 0-520-05442-4, page 77:
    • Sullivan, the girl and the butler get to the ground. The girl wears a turtle-neck sweater, a cap slightly sideways, a torn coat, turned-up pants and sneakers.
    SULLIVAN Why don't you go back with the car... You look about as much like a boy as .
    THE GIRL All right, they'll think I'm your frail .

    References

    *

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To play a stringed instrument, usually a banjo, by picking with the back of a fingernail.

    • Anagrams

    *

    rickety

    English

    Alternative forms

    * ricketty

    Adjective

    (er)
  • Of an object: not strong or sturdy, as because of poor construction or upkeep; not safe or secure; giddy; shaky.
    • He hesitated about climbing such a small, rickety ladder.
  • Of a person: feeble in the joints; tottering.
    • The rickety old man hardly managed to climb the stairs.
  • Affected with or suffering from rickets.

    • Synonyms

    * (not held or fixed securely and likely to fall over) precarious, unsteady, shaky, tottering, unsafe, unstable, wobbly