frail

Etymology 1

table From Middle English frele, fraill, from Old French fraile, from Latin fragilis. Cognate to fraction, fracture, and doublet of fragile.

adj

1. Easily broken physically; not firm or durable; liable to fail and perish.
   Its nest is composed of the frailest materials, and is light and small in proportion to the size of the bird 1831, John James Audubon, Ornithological Biography: Volume 1: Blue-grey Fly-catcher
2. Weak; infirm.
   Frail smoke of morning in the air and a sort of muffled hum that is not sound but is not silence either. 1993, John Banville, Ghosts
   O as the soft and frail lights break upon your eyelids 1922, Isaac Rosenberg, Dawn
3. (medicine) In an infirm state leading one to be easily subject to disease or other health problems, especially regarding the elderly.
4. Mentally fragile.
5. Liable to fall from virtue or be led into sin; not strong against temptation; weak in resolution; unchaste.

noun

1. (dated, slang) A girl.
   She was the roughest, toughest frail, but Minnie had a heart as big as a whale. 1931, Cab Calloway, Irving Mills, Minnie the Moocher
   ‘She's pickin' 'em tonight, right on the nose,’ he said. ‘That tall black-headed frail.’ 1939, Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, Penguin, published 2011, page 148
   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 Mae West. THE GIRL All right, they'll think I'm your frail. 1941, Preston Sturges, “Sullivan's Travels”, in Five Screenplays, page 77

verb

1. To play a stringed instrument, usually a banjo, by picking with the back of a fingernail.

Etymology 2

table From Middle English frayel, from Old French frael, fraiel, of unknown origin; possibly a dissimilatory variant of flael, flaiel (“flail”).

noun

1. A basket made of rushes, used chiefly to hold figs and raisins.
2. The quantity of fruit or other items contained in a frail.
3. A rush for weaving baskets.

Etymology 3

noun

1. Synonym of farasola (“old unit of weight”)

Etymology 4

table

noun

1. (dialectal, obsolete) Synonym of flail.
   The scythe, the sickle and the flail (or "frail", is it is invariably called) - these should surely be incorporated in the county arms, for on their use much of the prosperity of Essex has always rested until now. 1948, C. Henry Warren, The English Counties, Essex, Odhams, p. 170