Frail vs Tenuous - What's the difference?
frail | tenuous |
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.
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’:
* 1933 , , , edition 1, Book 2, Chapter XXII:
* 1939 , (Raymond Chandler), The Big Sleep , Penguin 2011, p. 148:
* 1941 , Preston Sturges, '', published in ''Five Screenplays , ISBN 0-520-05442-4, page 77:
To play a stringed instrument, usually a banjo, by picking with the back of a fingernail.
Thin in substance or consistency.
insubstantial
* July 18 2012 , Scott Tobias, AV Club The Dark Knight Rises [http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-dark-knight-rises-review-batman,82624/]
As adjectives the difference between frail and tenuous
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 tenuous is thin in substance or consistency.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)Noun
(en noun)- She was the roughest, toughest frail , but Minnie had a heart as big as a whale.
- 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.
- ‘She's pickin' 'em tonight, right on the nose,’ he said. ‘That tall black-headed frail .’
- 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)Anagrams
*tenuous
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- The aether was thought to be of tenuous strands.
- His argument was not convincing in the debate, considering how tenuous it was.
- Picking up eight years after The Dark Knight left off, the film finds Gotham enjoying a tenuous peace based on Harvey Dent’s moral ideals rather than the ugly truth of his demise.