break

See also: Break

break - English

Pronunciation

  • enPR: brāk, IPA: /bɹeɪk/, [bɹʷeɪ̯k]
  • (obsolete) enPR: brīk, IPA: /bɹiːk/
  • Homophone: brake

Verb

break (third-person singular simple present breaks, present participle breaking, simple past broke or (archaic) brake, past participle broken or (nonstandard) broke)

  1. (transitive, intransitive) To separate into two or more pieces, to fracture or crack, by a process that cannot easily be reversed for reassembly.
    • If the vase falls to the floor, it might break.
    • In order to tend to the accident victim, he will break the window of the car.
    1. (transitive, intransitive) To crack or fracture (bone) under a physical strain.
      • His ribs broke under the weight of the rocks piled on his chest.
      • She broke her neck.
      • He slipped on the ice and broke his leg.
  2. (transitive) To divide (something, often money) into smaller units.
    • Can you break a hundred-dollar bill for me?
    • The wholesaler broke the container loads into palettes and boxes for local retailers.
  3. (transitive) To cause (a person or animal) to lose spirit or will; to crush the spirits of.
    • Her child's death broke Angela.
    • Interrogators have used many forms of torture to break prisoners of war.
    • The interrogator hoped to break her to get her testimony against her accomplices.
    1. To turn an animal into a beast of burden.
      • You have to break an elephant before you can use it as an animal of burden.
  4. (intransitive) To be crushed, or overwhelmed with sorrow or grief.
    • My heart is breaking.
  5. (transitive) To interrupt; to destroy the continuity of; to dissolve or terminate.
    • I've got to break this habit I have of biting my nails.
    • to break silence; to break one's sleep; to break one's journey
    • I had won four games in a row, but now you've broken my streak of luck.
    1. (transitive, theater) To end the run of (a play).
  6. (transitive) To ruin financially.
    • The recession broke some small businesses.
  7. (intransitive, obsolete) To fail in business; to go broke, to become bankrupt.
  8. (finance, intransitive) Of prices on the stock exchange: to fall suddenly.
  9. (transitive) To violate; to fail to adhere to.
    • When you go to Vancouver, promise me you won't break the law.
    • He broke his vows by cheating on his wife.
    • break one's word
    • Time travel would break the laws of physics.
  10. (intransitive, of a fever) To go down, in terms of temperature, indicating that the most dangerous part of the illness has passed.
    • Susan's fever broke at about 3 AM, and the doctor said the worst was over.
  11. (intransitive, of a spell of settled weather) To end.
    • The forecast says the hot weather will break by midweek.
  12. (intransitive, of a storm) To begin or end.
    • We ran to find shelter before the storm broke.
    • Around midday the storm broke, and the afternoon was calm and sunny.
  13. (intransitive, of morning, dawn, day etc.) To arrive.
    • Morning has broken.
    • The day broke crisp and clear.
  14. (transitive, gaming slang) To render (a game) unchallenging by altering its rules or exploiting loopholes or weaknesses in them in a way that gives a player an unfair advantage.
    • Changing the rules to let white have three extra queens would break chess.
    • I broke the RPG by training every member of my party to cast fireballs as well as use swords.
  15. (transitive, intransitive) To stop, or to cause to stop, functioning properly or altogether.
    • On the hottest day of the year the refrigerator broke.
    • Did you two break the trolley by racing with it?
    1. (specifically, in programming) To cause (some feature of a program or piece of software) to stop functioning properly; to cause a regression.
      • Adding 64-bit support broke backward compatibility with earlier versions.
  16. (transitive) To cause (a barrier) to no longer bar.
    • break a seal
    1. (specifically) To cause the shell of (an egg) to crack, so that the inside (yolk) is accessible.
    2. (specifically) To open (a safe) without using the correct key, combination, or the like.
  17. (transitive) To destroy the arrangement of; to throw into disorder; to pierce.
    • The cavalry were not able to break the British squares.
  18. (intransitive, of a wave of water) To collapse into surf, after arriving in shallow water.
  19. (intransitive) To burst forth; to make its way; to come into view.
  20. (intransitive) To interrupt or cease one's work or occupation temporarily; to go on break.
    • Let's break for lunch.
  21. (transitive) To interrupt (a fall) by inserting something so that the falling object does not (immediately) hit something else beneath.
    • He survived the jump out the window because the bushes below broke his fall.
  22. (transitive, ergative) To disclose or make known an item of news, a band, etc.
    • The newsman wanted to break a big story, something that would make him famous.
    • I don't know how to break this to you, but your cat is not coming back.
    • When news of their divorce broke, ...
  23. (intransitive, of a sound) To become audible suddenly.
  24. (transitive) To change a steady state abruptly.
    • His coughing broke the silence.
    • His turning on the lights broke the enchantment.
    • With the mood broken, what we had been doing seemed pretty silly.
  25. (transitive, with for) To (attempt to) disengage and flee to; to make a run for.
  26. (copulative, informal) To suddenly become.
    • Things began breaking bad for him when his parents died.
    • The arrest was standard, when suddenly the suspect broke ugly.
  27. (intransitive, of a male voice) To become deeper at puberty.
  28. (intransitive, of a voice) To alter in type due to emotion or strain: in men, generally to go up, in women, sometimes to go down; to crack.
    • His voice breaks when he gets emotional.
  29. (transitive) To surpass or do better than (a specific number); to do better than (a record), setting a new record.
    • He broke the men's 100-meter record.
    • I can't believe she broke 3 under par!
    • The policeman broke sixty on a residential street in his hurry to catch the thief.
  30. (sports and games):
    1. (transitive, tennis) To win a game (against one's opponent) as receiver.
      • He needs to break serve to win the match.
    2. (intransitive, billiards, snooker, pool) To make the first shot; to scatter the balls from the initial neat arrangement.
      • Is it your or my turn to break?
    3. (transitive, backgammon) To remove one of the two men on (a point).
  31. (transitive, military, most often in the passive tense) To demote; to reduce the military rank of.
  32. (transitive) To end (a connection); to disconnect.
    • The referee ordered the boxers to break the clinch.
    • The referee broke the boxers' clinch.
    • I couldn't hear a thing he was saying, so I broke the connection and called him back.
  33. (intransitive, of an emulsion) To demulsify.
  34. (intransitive, sports) To counter-attack.
  35. (transitive, obsolete) To lay open, as a purpose; to disclose, divulge, or communicate.
  36. (intransitive) To become weakened in constitution or faculties; to lose health or strength.
  37. (transitive) To destroy the strength, firmness, or consistency of.
    • to break flax
  38. (transitive) To destroy the official character and standing of; to cashier; to dismiss.
  39. (intransitive) To make an abrupt or sudden change; to change gait.
    • to break into a run or gallop
  40. (intransitive, archaic) To fall out; to terminate friendship.
  41. (computing) To terminate the execution of a program before normal completion.
  42. (programming) To suspend the execution of a program during debugging so that the state of the program can be investigated.
  43. (computing) To cause, or allow the occurrence of, a line break.
    • zero-width non-breaking space

Conjugation

infinitive (to) break
present tense past tense
1st-person singular break broke
2nd-person singular break, breakest broke, brokest
3rd-person singular breaks, breaketh broke
plural break
subjunctive break broke
imperative break
participles breaking broken

Archaic or obsolete.

Quotations

  • For quotations using this term, see break.

Synonyms

Antonyms

Hyponyms

Hyponyms of break (verb)

Derived terms

Terms derived from break (verb)

Translations

  • Bulgarian: пробивам (bg) (probivam)
  • Catalan: trencar el servei (ca)
  • Danish: bryde (da)
  • Finnish: murtaa (fi)
  • German: einen Break machen
  • Hebrew: שבירה
  • Japanese: ブレークを取る (burēku o toru)
  • Korean: 쉬다 (ko) (swida)
  • Turkish: servis kırmak

Noun

break (plural breaks)

  1. An instance of breaking something into two or more pieces.
    • Synonym: split
    • The femur has a clean break and so should heal easily.
  2. A physical space that opens up in something or between two things.
    • Synonyms: breach, gap, space; see also interspace, hole
    • The sun came out in a break in the clouds.
    • He waited minutes for a break in the traffic to cross the highway.
  3. A rest or pause, usually from work.
    • Synonyms: time-out; see also pause
    • Let’s take a five-minute break.
    1. (UK, education) A time for students to talk or play between lessons.
    2. A scheduled interval of days or weeks between periods of school instruction; a holiday.
      • winter break, spring break
  4. A short holiday.
    • Synonyms: day off, time off; see also vacation
    • a weekend break on the Isle of Wight
  5. A temporary split with a romantic partner.
    • I think we need a break.
  6. An interval or intermission between two parts of a performance, for example a theatre show, broadcast, or sports game.
  7. A significant change in circumstance, attitude, perception, or focus of attention.
    • big break
    • lucky break, bad break
  8. (finance) A sudden fall in prices on the stock exchange.
  9. The beginning (of the morning).
  10. An act of escaping.
    • make a break for it, for the door
    • It was a clean break.
    • prison break
  11. (computing) The separation between lines, paragraphs or pages of a written text.
  12. (computing) A keystroke or other signal that causes a program to terminate or suspend execution.
  13. (programming) Short for breakpoint.
  14. (Britain, weather) A change, particularly the end of a spell of persistent good or bad weather.
  15. (sports and games):
    1. (tennis) A game won by the receiving player(s).
    2. (billiards, snooker, pool) The first shot in a game of billiards.
    3. (snooker) The number of points scored by one player in one visit to the table.
    4. (soccer) The counter-attack.
    5. (golf) The curve imparted to the ball's motion on the green due to slope or grass texture.
    6. (surfing) A place where waves break (that is, where waves pitch or spill forward creating white water).
      • The final break in the Greenmount area is Kirra Point.
    7. (horse racing) The start of a horse race.
  16. (dated) A large four-wheeled carriage, having a straight body and calash top, with the driver's seat in front and the footman's behind.
  17. (equitation) A sharp bit or snaffle.
  18. (music) A short section of music, often between verses, in which some performers stop while others continue.
    • The fiddle break was amazing; it was a pity the singer came back in on the wrong note.
  19. (music) The point in the musical scale at which a woodwind instrument is designed to overblow, that is, to move from its lower to its upper register.
    • Crossing the break smoothly is one of the first lessons the young clarinettist needs to master.
  20. (music) The transition area between a singer's vocal registers; the passaggio.
  21. (geography, chiefly in the plural) An area along a river that features steep banks, bluffs, or gorges (e.g., Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, US).
  22. (obsolete, slang) An error.

Usage notes

  • (short section of music): The instruments that are named are the ones that carry on playing, for example a fiddle break implies that the fiddle is the most prominent instrument playing during the break.

Derived terms

Terms derived from break (noun)

Translations

  • Bulgarian: про́бив (bg) m (próbiv)
  • Danish: break n
  • Finnish: syötönmurto
  • German: Break (de) n
  • Japanese: ブレーク (burēku)
  • Norwegian:
  • Polish: przełamanie (pl) n
  • Swedish: break (sv) n
  • Bulgarian: разби́ване (bg) n (razbívane)
  • Catalan: entrada (ca) f
  • Finnish: aloituslyönti (fi)
  • German: , Eröffnungsstoß m, Anstoß (de) m
  • Japanese: ブレーク (burēku)

Noun

break (plural breaks)

  1. (music) A section of extended repetition of the percussion break to a song, created by a hip-hop DJ as rhythmic dance music.

Derived terms

Verb

break (third-person singular simple present breaks, present participle breaking, simple past and past participle breaked)

  1. (music, slang) To B-boy; to breakdance.
  • breaker

Anagrams

break - French

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /bʁɛk/

Noun

break m (plural breaks)

  1. break (pause, holiday)
    • Synonym: pause
    • C’est l’heure de faire un break.It's time to take a break.
  2. (tennis) break (of serve)

Derived terms


Noun

break m (plural breaks)

  1. (automotive) estate car, station wagon

break - Italian

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ˈbrɛk/

Noun

break m (invariable)

  1. break (intermission or brief suspension of activity)

Interjection

break

  1. break! (boxing)

break - Spanish

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ˈbɾeik/ [ˈbɾei̯k]

Noun

break m (plural breaks)

  1. break (pause)
  2. (tennis) break
Meaning and Definition of break
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