[a. F. fragilité (12th c.), ad. L. fragilitātem: see FRAILTY.]
1. The quality of being fragile or easily broken; hence, liability to be damaged or destroyed, weakness, delicacy.
1474. Caxton, Chesse, 147. Hit is not fittynge nor couenable thynge for a woman to goo to bataylle for the fragylite and feblenes of her.
1604. R. Cawdrey, Table Alph., Fragilitie, brittlenes, or weakenesse.
c. 1620. Bacon, Wks. (1857), III. 807. Upon the compound body, three things are chiefly to be observed: the colour: the fragility or pliantness: the volatility or fixation, compared with the simple bodies.
1707. Curios. in Husb. & Gard., 25. Man ought not to regard … Flowers without reflecting … on their Fragility and small Duration.
1756. Burke, Subl. & B., III. xvi. An air of robustness and strength is very prejudicial to beauty. An appearance of delicacy, and even of fragility, is almost essential to it.
1866. Tate, Brit. Mollusks, iv. 131. The shell of this species [Brown Snail] is of a glossy amber-colour, and is especially characterized by its strong, irregular, transverse wrinkles, and its extreme thinness and fragility.
b. fig.
1603. Knolles, Hist. Turks (1638), 54. That which was left of his body (for many had caried away some pieces thereof) being taken downe from the place where he hang, was cast into a base vault in the Theatre: where it for a space lay, as the lothsome carkasse of some wild beast, and the miserable spectacle of mans fragilitie.
1750. Johnson, Rambler, No. 71, 20 Nov., ¶ 9. It is lamented by Hearne, the learned antiquary of Oxford, that the general forgetfulness of the fragility of life, has remarkably infected the students of monuments and records. Ibid. (1751), No. 143, 30 July, ¶ 3. They [poets] would … lament the deceitfulness of hope, the fugacity of pleasure, the fragility of beauty, and the frequency of calamity.
1886. Morley, Sir H. Maine on Popular Government, in Fortn. Rev., N. S. XXXIX. Feb., 171. The controversy as to the relative fragility, or the relative difficulty, of popular government and other forms of government.
† 2. Moral weakness, frailty. Obs.
1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., I. (1495), 8. In case that bi humayne fragilyte or freyltee thou trespas ayenst the commaundement of almyghty god.
a. 1533. Ld. Berners, Huon, l. 167. By goddes own mouth Adam & Eue was dyffendyd fro ye etynge of fruyte that was in paradyce, the whiche by theyr fragylyte brake goddes commaundement.
1579. Fulke, Heskins’ Parl., 273. God condescending to our fragilities.
1600. Holland, Livy, VIII. 307. Earnestly beseeching the Dictatour to forgive this humane fragilitie, and youthfull folly of Qu. Fabius.
a. 1624. H. Swinburne, Spousals (1686), 156. The fragility and mutability of the fæminine Sex considered.
