frail

adj

1. Easily broken physically; not firm or durable; liable to fail and perish.

   “Returne with ſpeed, time paſſeth ſwift away, Our life is fraile, and we may dye to day.”

   “Its nest is composed of the frailest materials, and is light and small in proportion to the size of the bird”

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.”

   “O as the soft and frail lights break upon your eyelids”

3. 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.”

   “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.”

   “‘She's pickin' 'em tonight, right on the nose,’ he said. ‘That tall black-headed frail.’”

   “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.”

   “It’s only a frail. Let’s bust her head in.”

2. A basket made of rushes, used chiefly to hold figs and raisins.
3. The quantity of fruit or other items contained in a frail.
4. A rush for weaving baskets.
5. Synonym of farasola (“old unit of weight”).
6. (England, 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.”

verb

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