Prince Rupert's drop

noun

1. a glass bead in the shape of a teardrop, a by-product of the glass-making process, formed by molten glass falling into water. The body of the drop can withstand great force, for example a hammer blow, but the whole will explode if the tail is nipped or the surface scored

Word History and Origins

Origin of Prince Rupert's drop¹

C17: thought to have been introduced to England by Prince Rupert, the German-born nephew of Charles I of England

Example Sentences

In other words, the berg becomes like a huge Prince Rupert's drop, which, as every one knows, is a drop formed by allowing molten glass to fall into cold water.

From Scientific American

—At the risk of being thought somewhat ignorant, I beg for enlightenment with regard to the following passage extracted from a late number of Household Words:— "Now the first production of an author, if only three lines long, is usually esteemed as a sort of Prince Rupert's Drop, which is destroyed entirely if a person make on it but a single scratch."

From Project Gutenberg

If you, or some of your correspondents, would not think this too trivial a matter to notice, and would inform me what the allusion to "Prince Rupert's Drop" refers to, I should be very much obliged.

From Project Gutenberg

As in the toy called Prince Rupert's Drop, a multitude of unassimilated particles are bound together by a master necessity.

From Project Gutenberg

But if we try the same experiment on the imaginative painter's work, and break off the merest stem or twig of it, it all goes to pieces like a Prince Rupert's drop.

From Project Gutenberg