Synonyms:
brittle, brickle, brickly
Meaning: having little elasticity; hence easily cracked or fractured or snapped; "brittle bones"; "glass is brittle"; "`brickle' and `brickly' are dialectal"
We knew that the ice was in awful upheaval around us; we heard, as our eyelids sweetly closed, the slow booming of distant guns, and brittle cracklings of artillery.
But the show decrees that all this is wrong, and that the tiny, brittle branches must be trained stiffly round till the shape of the plant shows as a sort of cylinder.
But to return to our quotation: "If Richard tried to take up the bundle, his fingers fell away like the legs of the brittle crab and the bundle collapsed, incalculable and helpless.