frangible

adj

1. Able to be broken; breakable, fragile.

   “A certain learned and curious Author gives us the following Characters or Properties of Glaſs, whereby it is diſtinguiſh'd from all other Bodies, viz. […] That it is frangible when thin, without annealing.”

   “Another object still [of roasting iron ore], is to make the ore more frangible, that it may be easily broken into fragments of a suitable size for smelting.”

   “Folklorists claim that the superstitious belief that opening an umbrella indoors augurs misfortune has a more recent and utilitarian origin. In eighteenth-century London, when metal-spoked waterproof umbrellas began to become a common rainy-day sight, their stiff, clumsy spring mechanism made them veritable hazards to open indoors. A rigidly spoked umbrella, opening suddely in a small room, could seriously injure an adult or a child, or shatter a frangible object.”

   “So, to make sure that I stay both current and deadly, I built the range, where the guys can sharpen their lethal talents, and—careful always to use only approved military weapons—I can sharpen mine. Shooting, after all, is a frangible skill. At SEAL Team Six we shot daily.”

noun

1. Something that is breakable or fragile; especially something that is intentionally made so, such as a bullet.

   “For extreme close range training, frangible bullets – those that disintegrate on hitting a hard target – are available. I have found the Winchester frangible loads especially suitable to high-volume training with the 9mm pistol. Frangibles are intended to give peace officers real safety when training at close range with steel reaction targets and vehicles used as range props.”

   “Is there some law of nature that states that an assassin can only use one kind of ammunition? Couldn't he just as easily load a frangible bullet and a nonfrangible one into his magazine as two frangibles or two regular, hardened rounds?”

   “Like other lethal-use frangibles, it is designed exclusively for use against soft targets. The "projectile" is composed of tungsten powder encapsulated by a traditional copper jacket. The powdered medium itself does not comprise a solid-mass projectile, per se, but it is tightly packed and contained within the jacket, which acts as the container. Like all frangible projectiles, these projectiles return to powder when impacting an object.”