"It's a certain kind of sound that is a bit brittle and a bit nasal, " she said.
When I had leafed through the yellowed, musty pages, a pressed pansy, as brittle and brown as a moth's wing had zigzagged to the floor in a papery flurry.
But a number of recent events suggests the country often has a brittle relationship with foreigners.
BBC: Chinese look to US as Beijing seeks to build soft power
As a fighting force, European countries will prove a brittle cane on which to lean in operations abroad.
Kenya is east Africa's most dynamic country but it remains a brittle construction left behind by British colonial rulers.
ECONOMIST: Two old political enemies form a surprising alliance
They made a Florentine a brittle biscuit loaded with slivered almonds and candied fruit and covered in chocolate roughly the size of an automobile hubcap.
Whether or not you are a Republican or a Democrat or one of the many undecided independents out there, a brittle democracy should be cause for concern.
FORBES: How Republican Trifectas Across the Country Could Change American Politics
But however innovative the strategy, the bald truth is that this war has pitted the most powerful armed forces in history against a brittle dictatorship, whose army was crippled by sanctions.
Without standing, he lifts his left foot and drags a brittle friction match across the sole of his boot, then watches the red tip flare and expire in the chill wind before he can transfer the flame.
In the case of the Challenger, the culprit was a simple O-ring that had become too brittle to do its job after a freezing night waiting on the launch pad.
FORBES: BP Oil Spill Investigation Will Focus On Blowout Preventers
Our economy, the entire global economy runs on credit, so it doesn't matter if you're in the housing sector or you make, you know, peanut butter brittle or you run a movie studio or whatever you do, you need access to credit.
However, the early goal was a huge blow to what is clearly still a side with brittle confidence and whilst they battled hard they never recovered from falling behind.
The Daily Mail reported customer complaints over what critics deemed a blander, more brittle biscuit - however, the company claims it hasn't changed the recipe for more than two years.
One might expect that at the ripe old age of 100 the company would be creaking along with brittle bones, weak knees, a bad heart, and finding it hard to get up in the morning.
Throw in the departures of Russell Martin and Nick Swisher to free agency as the Yankees try to trim their payroll for 2014, and the team will have a look that is more brittle than bombers.
The goal: a drug against osteoporosis, the brittle-bone disease that afflicts 25 million older Americans, mostly women.
"Dodd-Frank has made the system more brittle and has shaped the next crisis in a very negative way, " he warns.
WSJ: The Weekend Interview with Paul Singer: Mega-Banks and the Next Financial Crisis
Finally, today, after two weeks of limited attacks, British commanders concluded that the government's resistance was brittle and that it was time to begin a major attack.
So, with meticulous organisation, Givens, a retired heart surgeon, plans to return to the land of his birth, east of the mountains that separate the coastal plains around Seattle from the brittle, dry sagelands beyond, and stage a shooting accident.
"A lot of security systems are hard and brittle, " says Robert Baldwin, head of the security firm Plus Five Consulting.
With age, such concrete becomes brittle and is easily shaken loose by the vibration of a train racing past at 250kph (155mph).
You used the word "brittle" to describe your condition, and it is a very accurate descriptor of how vulnerable people with bipolar disorder can be to changes in their human or natural environments.
Even if Mr Rokita's party comes out ahead, many doubt that his brittle, volatile personality will rise to the challenges of running a government.
The day is nearing, they reckon, when Israelis wake to find that the brittle Palestinian Authority has collapsed and that they are living in a binational state in which Palestinians are demanding full civil rights in all the territories controlled by Israel, on either side of the 1967 line.
As brittle and imperious as Bishop could be, she also could be a warm and considerate friend.
No one would mistake the director John Hamburg for Ingmar Bergman, but his brittle, glossy comedy, despite its intermittently entertaining antics, leaves a long and bitter aftertaste of the haut-bourgeois blues.
"Stem cell research has the potential to act as the key which opens the door to many advances in our knowledge and our ability to treat some of the most heart-rending conditions that are presently untreatable, " said the Aberdeen South MP, who suffers from a genetic condition called Gaucher's disease which results in brittle bones.
There, our excursions mixed driving and walking, taking a jeep deep into the hinterland, then hoofing it through tall, brittle grass and across vast, scorched savannah.
应用推荐