frail

Preposition: at

• time: However, hip fracture patients who wait longer for surgery tend to be much frailer at the time of hospital admission.

Infinitive complement

• travel: Unfortunately this painting is too frail to travel from Moscow.

Modifies a noun

• pensioner: Her performance is more sure-footed and after a fall leaves the frail pensioner on the floor and reflecting on her life and cleaning routine.
• lady: The owner of the sweet shop, a frail old lady carrying a plastic bag, was led in.
• flesh: It is explicitly a reworking of the theme of the frustrated soul in the frail flesh.
• creature: We are frail creatures and we can only take so much!
• patient: Use lower doses in frail patients or at the extremes of ages.
• craft: Surely no power could bring their frail craft to land.

Modifying Another Word

• mentally: Age Concern Buckinghamshire runs two Rural Day Centers to help overcome the major problem of isolation for those who are mentally frail.
• physically: Western House provides care for elderly women who are physically frail mainly from the East Herts area.
• increasingly: In 1952 the King, a heavy smoker and in increasingly frail health, suffered a fatal stroke.
• too: However, their owner is too frail to take them on the long journey to the vet.
• rather: Physically Christopher was a rather frail child who was quite small in stature.
• quite: Gillian has hurt her foot, and W is quite frail and stiff.

Used with adjective complement

• become: They know that Man is weakened, become frail.
• look: He looks frail, with a bony shoulder poking out of his faded Batman T-shirt.
• get: I notice you did not call in the vet for Fergie and if she got or gets very frail would you put her down?
• grow: As the tempers grow frail, a war might break out; and both countries have nuclear capability.
• feel: Day 3 Sunday finds most of us feeling fairly frail.
• appear: And Neil Young, tho he has had a recent brush with mortality, no longer appears frail, but robust and hearty.