Which term describes a material that allows very little bending or shaping without shattering?

The term that best describes a material that allows very little bending or shaping without shattering is brittleness. Brittleness characterizes materials that break or shatter rather than deform when subjected to stress or force. This property is crucial in engineering and materials science to understand how a material will behave under load. For instance, glass and certain types of ceramics display brittle behavior; when they are subjected to bending forces, they do not yield or deform but instead fracture after reaching their limit.

Toughness refers to a material's ability to absorb energy and plastically deform without fracturing, which is the opposite of brittleness. Elasticity measures the ability of a material to return to its original shape after being deformed, which again is not applicable to a brittle material since it does not deform significantly under stress. Density relates to the mass per unit volume of a material, which does not directly pertain to a material's behavior under stress. Thus, the most fitting term for a material that shatters instead of bending is indeed brittleness.