Friable vs. Fryable

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Grammarist

Friable is an adjective that means easily crushed or crumbled, usually referring to soil and its ability to support plant growth. Friable or easily crumbled soil is crucial for strong root growth. Related words are friability and friableness. Friable is first used in the 1560s, derived from the Latin friabilis meaning easily crumbled or broken, and from friare, meaning rub away, crumble into small pieces.

Fryable is an adjective that denotes food that is possible to fry. Frying may occur in a pan, a griddle or in deep fat or oil. Fryable is derived from the verb fry, related words are fries, fried, frying. The verb fry appears in the late thirteenth century from the Old French frire, meaning to fry.

Examples

She said that 95 percent of the asbestos in the Shaw crawl space was intact, not “friable,” meaning that no fibers were loose and able to be breathed in. (The Buffalo News)

Through the fall and winter, the organic materials in the bed will “age” (decompose) and make the soil richer and more friable for spring planting. (The Daily News Journal)

This churned the already friable loam up so much that when more than 76mm of rain fell in the first four days of the ground attack the fields of Flanders became a sea of mud, up to two metres deep, in which men and pack animals could drown and equipment was lost forever. (The Canberra Times)

The University’s Food Innovation Center has created a group of foods using dulse, including a rice cracker, a salad dressing and fryable seaweed strips that taste like bacon. (LNP)

Take a bunch of bored cooks on a slow day, a handy commercial fryer and tons of fryable foods and see what happens. (The Jerusalem Post)

Or press it further to make a sliceable, fryable paneer. (The Times of India)

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