embrittlement
em·brit·tle·ment/ɛmˈbɹɪtl̩mənt/noun
embrittlement is a noun meaning “The process of being embrittled; loss of flexibility or elasticity of a material; the development of brittleness” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled E-M-B-R-I-T-T-L-E-M-E-N-T and has 4 syllables (em·brit·tle·ment), and it appears about once in every 14 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of embrittlement is embrittlements.
What does embrittlement mean?
noun
- 1
The process of being embrittled; loss of flexibility or elasticity of a material; the development of brittleness.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce embrittlement?
- /ɛmˈbɹɪtl̩mənt/
Embrittlement has 4 syllables, split em·brit·tle·ment in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-embrittlement.ogg, En-au-embrittlement.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of embrittlement
- embrittlements plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is embrittlement?
Embrittlement appears about once in every 14 million words in written English, the 113,022nd most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Embrittlement in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense Process of being embrittled:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| German | Versprödung |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does embrittlement come from?
From embrittle + -ment.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).