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Frail vs Tenuous - What's the difference?

frail | tenuous |

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)
  • 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.
  • 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

    *

    tenuous

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Thin in substance or consistency.
  • The aether was thought to be of tenuous strands.
  • insubstantial
  • His argument was not convincing in the debate, considering how tenuous it was.
  • * July 18 2012 , Scott Tobias, AV Club The Dark Knight Rises [http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-dark-knight-rises-review-batman,82624/]
  • 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.