brittle
adj
1 easily cracked, snapped, or broken; fragile
2 curt or irritable
a brittle reply
3 hard or sharp in quality
n
4 a crunchy sweet made with treacle and nuts
peanut brittle
(C14: from Old English brytel (unattested); related to brytsen fragment, breotan to break)
♦
brittlely, brittly adv