/bɹeɪk/, [bɹ(ʷ)eɪ̯k], /bɹɛk/
OriginClipping of breakdown (the percussion break of songs chosen by a DJ for use in hip-hop music) and see also breakdancing.
- ergative, intransitive, transitiveTo 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.”
“First, marinate the tofu. In a bowl, whisk the kecap manis, chilli sauce, and sesame oil together. Cut the tofu into strips about 1cm thick, mix gently (so it doesn't break) with the marinade and leav”
- ergative, intransitive, transitiveTo crack or fracture (bone) under a physical strain.
“His ribs broke under the weight of the rocks piled on his chest.”
“He slipped on the ice and broke his leg.”
- transitiveTo 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.”
- transitiveTo 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.”
- transitiveTo turn an animal into a beast of burden.
“Colonel: See, gentlemen? Any horse could be broken.”
“You have to break an elephant before you can use it as an animal of burden.”
- intransitiveTo be crushed, or overwhelmed with sorrow or grief.
“My heart is breaking.”
“Two days later they transferred her to another prison to separate us. I broke. My life was gone, so I thought.”
- transitiveTo 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.”
- transitiveTo end the run of (a play).
“In July Alexander broke the run and went on tour, as was his custom. He believed in keeping in touch with provincial audiences and how wise he was!”
“After Camberwell he broke the play's season and brought it back in the autumn with a few revisions and a noticeably strengthened cast but without any special success.”
- transitiveTo ruin financially.
“The recession broke some small businesses.”
“With arts like these rich Matho, when he speaks, / Attracts all fees, and little lawyers breaks.”
- intransitive, obsoleteTo fail in business; to go broke, to become bankrupt.
“He that puts all upon adventures doth oftentimes break, and come to poverty.”
“‘I knew he was in some such low way—He broke did not he?’”
- intransitiveOf prices on the stock exchange: to fall suddenly.
“With a few exceptions, stock prices tend to follow the overall market averages. When you have a market decline, therefore, many stocks share the same overall chart pattern. Prices break and go sideway”
- transitiveTo 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.”
“to break one’s word”
- intransitiveTo 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.”
- intransitiveTo end.
“The forecast says the hot weather will break by midweek.”
- intransitiveTo begin or end.
“We ran to find shelter before the storm broke.”
“Around midday the storm broke, and the afternoon was calm and sunny.”
- intransitiveTo arrive.
“Morning has broken.”
“The day broke crisp and clear.”
“The day begins to break, and night is fled.”
- slang, transitiveTo 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.”
- intransitive, transitiveTo 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?”
- intransitive, specifically, transitiveTo 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.”
- transitiveTo cause (a barrier) to no longer bar.
“to break a seal”
“I'm a riddle so strong, you can't break me”
- specifically, transitiveTo cause the shell of (an egg) to crack, so that the inside (yolk) is accessible.
- specifically, transitiveTo open (a safe) without using the correct key, combination, or the like.
- transitiveTo destroy the arrangement of; to throw into disorder; to pierce.
“The cavalry were not able to break the British squares.”
- intransitiveTo collapse into surf, after arriving in shallow water.
“There are many places on the reef that break during the summer.”
- intransitiveTo burst forth; to make its way; to come into view.
“The Clouds are ſtill above; and, while I ſpeak, / A ſecond deluge o'er our head may break.”
“And from the turf a fountain broke, / And gurgled at our feet.”
- intransitiveTo interrupt or cease one's work or occupation temporarily; to go on break.
- transitiveTo 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.”
- ergative, transitiveTo 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...”
- intransitiveTo become audible suddenly.
“Like the crash of thunderbolts…, the sound of musquetry broke over the lawn, ….”
- transitiveTo 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.”
- transitiveTo (attempt to) disengage and flee to; to make a run for.
“As the last firing of the big guns begins to die down, the German light forces still fighting to the west begin to make their choices. Some break for the open sea; others run for the German-occupied c”
- copulative, informalTo suddenly become.
“Things began breaking bad for him when his parents died.”
“The arrest was standard, when suddenly the suspect broke ugly.”
- intransitiveTo become deeper at puberty.
- intransitiveTo 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.”
- intransitiveTo de-emulsify.
“Conversely, as the emulsion breaks and the system returns to the original state, energy is released.”
“When the droplets hit a solid wall the emulsion breaks instantly forming a bitumen on the wall and thus a layer up to 1 cm thick can be sprayed in one operation without requiring drying in between.”
- transitiveTo 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.”
- transitiveTo win a game (against one's opponent) as receiver.
“He needs to break serve to win the match.”
“Yet when play restarted the Czech was a train that kept on running over Nadal. After breaking Nadal in the opening game of the final set, he went 2-0 up and later took the count to 4-2 with yet anothe”
- intransitiveTo make the first shot; to scatter the balls from the initial neat arrangement.
“Is it your or my turn to break?”
- transitiveTo remove one of the two men on (a point).
- transitiveTo demote; to reduce the military rank of.
“Sir Reginald Wingate, High Commissioner in Egypt, was happy for the success of the work he had advocated for years. I grudged him this happiness; for McMahon, who took the actual risk of starting it, ”
“And he played no favorites: when his son-in-law sacked a city he had been told to spare, Genghis broke him to private.”
“One morning after the budget had failed to balance Finanzminister von Scholz picked up Der Reichsanzeiger and found he had been broken to sergeant.”
- transitiveTo 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.”
- intransitiveTo counter-attack.
“The Baggies almost hit back instantly when Graham Dorrans broke from midfield and pulled the trigger from 15 yards but Paul Robinson did superbly to tip the Scot's drive around the post.”
- obsolete, transitiveTo lay open, as a purpose; to disclose, divulge, or communicate.
“Katharine, break thy mind to me.”
- intransitiveTo become weakened in constitution or faculties; to lose health or strength.
“See how the dean begins to break; / Poor gentleman he droops apace.”
- transitiveTo destroy the strength, firmness, or consistency of.
- transitiveTo destroy the official character and standing of; to cashier; to dismiss.
“when I see a great officer broke.”
- intransitiveTo make an abrupt or sudden change; to change gait.
“to break into a run or gallop”
- archaic, intransitiveTo fall out; to terminate friendship.
“c. 1700 Jeremy Collier, On Friendship
To break upon the score of danger or expense is to be mean and narrow-spirited.”
- To terminate the execution of a program before normal completion.
- To suspend the execution of a program during debugging so that the state of the program can be investigated.
- To cause, or allow the occurrence of, a line break.
“zero-width non-breaking space”
- slangTo B-boy; to breakdance.
“Let the poppers pop and the breakers break / We're cool, cool cats, it's like that”
- rareTo brake.
“Breaking heavily, now on a 1 in 39 gradient, the train makes as if to cross the Tamar at once, only to swing sharply to the right, […].”
- An instance of breaking something into two or more pieces.
“The femur has a clean break and so should heal easily.”
- A physical space that opens up in something or between two things.
“The sun came out in a break in the clouds.”
“He waited minutes for a break in the traffic to cross the highway.”
- An interruption of continuity; departure from or rupture with.
“Work commenced at 2.30 p.m. on Saturday and continued without break until 4 a.m. on Monday morning, in the course of which three shifts of upwards of 90 men each and three steam cranes were employed.”
“But the young activists of Move Forward outmanoeuvred the older party, and beat many of its candidates, with an imaginative, social media-based campaign offering voters a complete break with the past,”
- A rest or pause, usually from work.
“Let’s take a five-minute break.”
- UKA time for students to talk or play between lessons.
- A scheduled interval of days or weeks between periods of school instruction; a holiday.
“winter break, spring break”
- A short holiday.
“a weekend break on the Isle of Wight”
- A temporary split with a romantic partner.
“I think we need a break.”
- An interval or intermission between two parts of a performance, for example a theatre show, broadcast, or sports game.
“But they marginally improved after the break as Didier Drogba hit the post.”
- A significant change in circumstance, attitude, perception, or focus of attention.
“big break”
“lucky break, bad break”
“them's the breaks”
- A sudden fall in prices on the stock exchange.
“Following the invasion of France by the Germans in May of 1940, the securities markets experienced a break in prices.”
- The beginning (of the morning).
“daybreak”
“at the break of day”
- An act of escaping.
“to make a break for it; to make a break for the door”
“It was a clean break.”
“prison break”
- The separation between lines, paragraphs or pages of a written text.
“No matter how much text you add above the break, the text after the break will always appear at the top of a new page.”
- A keystroke or other signal that causes a program to terminate or suspend execution.
- abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsisEllipsis of breakpoint.
- BritishA change, particularly the end of a spell of persistent good or bad weather.
- A game won by the receiving player(s).
- The first shot in a game of billiards.
- The number of points scored by one player in one visit to the table.
- The counter-attack.
“Blackpool were not without their opportunities - thanks to their willingness to commit and leave men forward even when under severe pressure - and they looked very capable of scoring on the break.”
- The curve imparted to the ball's motion on the green due to slope or grass texture.
- 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.”
“One of the most popular summer breaks is just off to one side of the Ala Wai Yacht Harbor entrance, a spot called Ala Moana.”
- The start of a horse race.
“Cigar was distracted at the break and let his five opponents get the jump.”
“Perhaps it stumbles to its knees at the break, effectively losing the race at the outset.”
- The opening of packages of cards for a collectible card game, often for further distribution to paying customers.
- datedA large four-wheeled carriage, having a straight body and calash top, with the driver's seat in front and the footman's behind.
- A sharp bit or snaffle.
“Pampered jades […] which need nor break nor bit.”
- 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.”
“The effect was weird, because with that intuitive sense possessed by the African, every drummer knew exactly when the “breaks” were coming, and whole banks of bass drums would drop out precisely on th”
- 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.”
- The transition area between a singer's vocal registers; the passaggio.
“34. Of the Registers of the Voice - All singers have observed that there are certain parts of the Vocal Scale where a break, as it is called, seldom fails to occur.”
“The point of division between the two vocal registers is most frequently referred to as the register’s break.”
“Boys should continue in their high voice, across the break to the lower range, and end up with a voice that doesn’t have a break (Leck, 2009).”
- in-pluralAn area along a river that features steep banks, bluffs, or gorges (e.g., Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, US).
- obsolete, slangAn error.
“"Maybe he will some day," says the Missus, and then her and Bessie pretended like they'd made a break and was embarrassed.”
- A section of extended repetition of the percussion break to a song, created by a hip-hop DJ as rhythmic dance music.
“The smooth criminal on beat breaks / Never put me in your box if your shit eats tapes”
Formsbreaks(present, singular, third-person) · breaking(participle, present) · broke(past) · brake(archaic, past) · broken(participle, past) · broke(nonstandard, participle, past) · break(infinitive) · break(first-person, present, singular) · broke(first-person, past, singular) · break(present, second-person, singular) · breakest(archaic, present, second-person, singular) · broke(past, second-person, singular) · brokest(archaic, past, second-person, singular) · breaketh(archaic, present, singular, third-person) · broke(past, singular, third-person) · break(plural, present) · broke(past, plural) · break(present, subjunctive) · broke(past, subjunctive) · break(imperative, present)