crumbly

adjectiveB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,652 of 15,258neutral

Crumbly means falling apart into little dry pieces. Crumbly cheese, a crumbly texture, crumbly soil.

In cheese and pastry it is praise, and in soil it is the highest praise there is — a crumbly tilth means the structure is right for roots and water. In mortar or stone it means decay. The same texture is a virtue or a fault depending on what has it.

Definitions of crumbly

1adjectivecrumblyFalling apart into little dry pieces.B2+
“This cheese is so crumbly that it's hard to slice neatly.”
- Said"This cheese is lovely and crumbly; try it with the pear, I mean it."
- WrittenThe pastry was crumbly and rich, and it left a trail from the kitchen to the sofa.
- UsedChill the dough well for a crumbly shortbread.
- ContrastCrumbly, not soft. Soft bends and gives; crumbly falls into small dry pieces at a touch. soft →
- Not thisWet cake that collapses is not crumbly. Crumbly is dry, and it breaks into bits.
- SimplyThe bread is crumbly. Eat it over a plate.
Patterncrumbly + noun (cheese, pastry, texture) · go crumbly · crumble

crumbly is a quality of texture.

Remember it

CRUMBLy → it CRUMBLEs in your hand

It is crumble + y: cheese or cake that falls apart into little dry pieces as soon as you touch it.

hooks ontocrumble

Where it comes from

Old English
*crymlan — to crumble
Middle English
*crymblen
English
crumble
English, today
crumbly

Built from

*crymel · Old English — a small crumb; crumble

From crumble + -y. crumble comes from earlier crymble, crimble, from Middle English crymblen, kremelen, from Old English crymlan (“to crumble”), from crymel (“a small crumb; crumble”), diminutive of Old English cruma (“crumb”), equivalent to crumb + le. Compare Dutch kruimelen (“to crumble”), German Low German krömmeln (“to crumble”), German Krümel, diminutive of German Krume, German krümeln, krümmeln (“to crumble”). Alteration of vowel due to analogy with crumb.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in In the Kitchen

Practise this word

crumbly in the wild

Cheshire cheese is a dense and crumbly cheese.
Cheshire cheese
Shortening is any fat that is a solid at room temperature and is used to make crumbly pastry and other food products.
Shortening
The reason it is called shortening is that it makes the resulting food crumbly, or to behave as if it had short fibers.
Shortening
Shortcake generally refers to a dessert with a crumbly scone-like texture.
Shortcake
Hoop cheese refers to two different cheeses: a hard cheese similar to cheddar, and a crumbly cheese similar to dry-curd cottage cheese.
Hoop cheese

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

Definitions of crumbly

1adjectivecrumblyFalling apart into little dry pieces.B2+

“This cheese is so crumbly that it's hard to slice neatly.”

Said"This cheese is lovely and crumbly; try it with the pear, I mean it."
WrittenThe pastry was crumbly and rich, and it left a trail from the kitchen to the sofa.
UsedChill the dough well for a crumbly shortbread.
ContrastCrumbly, not soft. Soft bends and gives; crumbly falls into small dry pieces at a touch. soft →
Not thisWet cake that collapses is not crumbly. Crumbly is dry, and it breaks into bits.
SimplyThe bread is crumbly. Eat it over a plate.

Patterncrumbly + noun (cheese, pastry, texture) · go crumbly · crumble

crumbly is a quality of texture.