It was a promise that looked increasingly fragile as the days passed.

While the housing and credit bubbles were growing, a series of factors caused the financial system to become increasingly fragile.

Happiness seems to me an increasingly fragile thing, and never more so than at Christmas.

The work was fatiguing, and during these years he suffered from an increasingly fragile constitution.

In the following years, his health would become increasingly fragile.

Two events this morning sent shock waves through the state's increasingly fragile energy system.

"Like many orchestras, we're working with an increasingly fragile economic model," he said.

It is, however, not only our relationships with people that seem increasingly fragile or impermanent.

Within months the situation had turned sharply towards war, and the Convention grew increasingly fragile.

The machine is no longer working, and its markets look increasingly fragile.