A Dictionary of Cont..

fragile 188
Decimals, which are a class of fractions, are
aiways expressed in figures, as in 0.58 grams.
A fraction may be treated as a singular or a
plural, depending on whether it is thought of
as a unit or as a certain number of individuals,
as in three-fourths of the surface of the earth is
sea and three-fourths of the people are illiterate.
In speaking of human beings a plural verb is
generally preferred, and we say one percent are,
one in ten are.
Traditionally, a fraction that ends in s, and
that is being used to indicate a physical distance,
drops the s when it stands before another noun,
as in three-eighth inch plate. It retains the s
when it is used to measure anything except distance,
as in a two-thirds reduction, a three-fifths
majority. In the United States today these fractions
usually retain the s, even in distance
measurements, and the form without s is seldom
heard. The word three-quarters is an exception
to the rule. In literary English and in current
speech, it may appear with or without the s, as
in a three-quarter majority, a three-quarters inch
board.
Fractions may be used as adverbs of measure,
as in the day is two-thirds gone, he is half dead.
With the exception of half, a fraction used in
this way must begin with a numeral or the word
a. We may say it is one-quarter gone or a
quarter gone, but not it is quarter gone.
fragile: frail: brittle. That which is fragile is easilv
broken, shattered, or damaged. it must bk
handled with care to avoid breakage (These
spun glass fiowers are extremely fragile). Frail
is simply a variant of fragile and in many contexts
the two words are interchangeable; whatever
is fragile is frail. But frail has acquired
some special meanings of its own; everything
that is frail is not necessarily fragile. Frail, in
particular, applies to health and to immaterial
things (Though still active in his ninetieth year,
he was very frail. Alas, her vows proved frail).
Brittle applies to anything that breaks readily
with a comparatively smooth fracture (Old
bones arc brittle). It usually implies a hard outside
finish on delicate material. It has always
had metaphorical uses (One woful day sweeps
children, friends and wife/ And all the brittle
blessings of my life) and at the present is
almost, in this use, a vogue word (brittle wit,
bright and brittle conversation).
fragile; frangible. That is frangible which is capable
of being broken. The word is usually restricted
to material objects and literal breakableness.
That is fragile which is easily broken,
delicate, brittle, or frail. It might be said that
human bones are frangible but that the bones
of the aged are fragile.
frank, candid and outspoken imply a freedom
from conventional reticence in speech, a blunt
boldness, an uninhibited sincerity and plainness
in speaking the truth. Virtues, surely, yet virtues
that lend themselves so easily and so often as
disguises for malice that the world, which doesn’t
like them very much anyway, reinforces its
natural distaste with a justified suspicion. Frank
is the least tainted of the three. A frank and
open countenance is wholly laudatory. A frank
statement of the case, however, is plainly
colored by the speaker’s agreement with the
statement and a frank criticism may be a euphemism
for a spiteful calumny. Candid suggests
fairness, openness of mind, sincerity and truthfulness;
yet there is often a suggestion of unpleasantness
about the exercise of these admirable
qualities. They are outspoken who express
themselves freely, without reserve or concealment,
even when it is inappropriate to do so.
Such men, like Alceste in Moliere’s The
Misanthrope, displace all mirth and break many
a good meeting with admir’d disorder, and while
they are praised by the simple, especially those
among the simple whose resentments their behavior
has gratified, they are disliked by the
more sophisticated.
Frankenstein. Properly Frankenstein was not the
monster in Mary Shelley’s book but the creator
of the monster, a sensitive, high-minded young
student who accidentally stumbled on “the
secret of life” and bitterly rued the day he did.
And even the monster himself, for all his resentful
homicides, was not intended to be wholly
repulsive. The novel was written as a Rousseauistic
treatise on education; the monster was bad
because he was unloved. None the less the term
is now established (“almost, but surely not quite,
sanctioned by custom,” cries Fowler in a plea
which he must have felt to be futile) as a name
for any monstrous creation, especially one that
threatens to destroy its creator (The Republicans
have created this Frankenstein. They must deal
with him). In the novel, by the way, the monster
does not kill Frankenstein. Frankenstein dies
from exposure while pursuing the fleeing monster
across the arctic wastes.
frankly. How our hearts sink at a prefatory
frankly, for we know some brutality is to follow,
and a craven brutality, too, that having by this
preface claimed a simple plainness will feel free
to recoil in shocked horror, aghast at our brutality
or pitying our inability to face the truth,
should we reply in kind.
frantic; furious; rabid. To be frantic is to be wild
with excitement, whether it be of passion, delight,
fear, or pain, to be in a state of frenzy,
bordering on delirium (As the night passed and
the child could not be found the woman grew
frantic and could scarcely be restrained by her
neighbors from rushing out into the storm).
Furious suggests great violence, the releasing of
tremendous (usually malignant) energies (At
the bursting of the oil storage tank the flames
surged furiously upwards and engulfed the remainder
of the building). When applied to
human beings, it suggests, like frantic, a state of
violence close to madness, but furious suggests
a more outward-directed, aggressive violence,
anger carried to the extreme (On receipt of the
news he was furious and ordered the hostages
to be massacred). Rabid means raving mad,
irrational in the extreme, furious, raving, but
it is usually applied to the carrying to excess of
some one concern (The rabid isolationists would
have had us discontinue even commercial rela-