break – English noun declension

English noun forms of break

Noun: break
Singularbreak
Pluralbreaks

Sample Sentences

  • The femur has a clean break and so should heal easily.
  • The sun came out in a break in the clouds.
  • He waited minutes for a break in the traffic to cross the highway.
  • 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. [1958 June 26, “New Track Layout and Marshalling Yard at Barking”, in Railway Magazine, page 428:]
  • 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, and a different kind of political leadership. [2023 May 29, Jonathan Head, “Pita Limjaroenrat: Thai election upstart who vows to be different”, in BBC:]
  • Let’s take a five-minute break.
  • be on break
  • get on break
  • It was playtime - or rather ‘break’ - and I had brazenly joined in a game of football on the school parade ground. [1983, Bill Oddie, Gone Birding, London: Methuen, page 35:]
  • winter break, spring break
  • a weekend break on the Isle of Wight
  • I think we need a break.
  • But they marginally improved after the break as Didier Drogba hit the post. [2010 December 29, Chris Whyatt, “Chelsea 1 - 0 Bolton”, in BBC:]
  • big break
  • lucky break, bad break
  • them's the breaks
  • Following the invasion of France by the Germans in May of 1940, the securities markets experienced a break in prices. [1947, Reports of the Tax Court of the United States, volume 8, page 459:]
  • daybreak
  • at the break of day
  • to make a break for it; to make a break for the door
  • It was a clean break.
  • prison break
  • 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. [2001, Nan Barber, David Reynolds, Office 2001 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual, page 138:]
  • 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. [2010 December 28, Owen Phillips, “Sunderland 0 - 2 Blackpool”, in BBC:]
  • 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. [1966, Bruce Brown, director, The Endless Summer:]
  • Cigar was distracted at the break and let his five opponents get the jump. [1999, Jay Hovdey, Cigar: America's Horse, page 63:]
  • Perhaps it stumbles to its knees at the break, effectively losing the race at the outset. [2010, John Alexander, Exotic Wagering the Winning Way, page 60:]
  • Pampered jades […] which need nor break nor bit. [1576, George Gascoigne, The Steele Glas:]
  • 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 the beat. [1937, Ivan T. Sanderson, Animal Treasure, page 233:]
  • Crossing the break smoothly is one of the first lessons the young clarinettist needs to master.
  • 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. [1862, John Winebrenner, The Serephina, Or, Christian Library of Church Music, page 13:]
  • The point of division between the two vocal registers is most frequently referred to as the register’s break. [2007, S. Anthony Frisella, The Baritone Voice: A Personal Guide to Acquiring a Superior Singing Technique, page 14:]
  • 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). [2018, Karen Brunssen, The Evolving Singing Voice: Changes Across the Lifespan, page 76:]
  • "Maybe he will some day," says the Missus, and then her and Bessie pretended like they'd made a break and was embarrassed. [1916, Ring W. Lardner, “Three Kings and a Pair”, in The Saturday Evening Post:]
  • A full break or even multiple breaks is an older, more conservative style, as modern pants often end well above the shoe, so there is no break.

Etymology

1. Etymology tree
2. Proto-Indo-European *bʰreg-
3. Proto-Indo-European *-eti
4. Proto-Indo-European *bʰrégeti
5. Proto-Germanic *brekaną
6. Proto-West Germanic *brekan
7. Old English brecan
8. Middle English breken
9. English break
10. From Middle English breken, from Old English brecan (“to break”), from Proto-West Germanic *brekan, from Proto-Germanic *brekaną (“to break”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰreg- (“to break”). Doublet of bray.
11. Cognates
12. Cognates of Germanic origin include Scots brek (“to break”), West Frisian brekke (“to break”), Dutch breken (“to break”), Low German breken (“to break”), German brechen (“to break”), French broyer (“to crush, grind”), Gothic 𐌱𐍂𐌹𐌺𐌰𐌽 (brikan, “to break, destroy”), Norwegian brek (“desire, yearning”).
13. Also cognate with Albanian brishtë (“fragile”), Latin frangō (“break, break up, shatter”, verb), whence English fracture and other terms – fragile, frail, fraction, and fragment.
14. The modern pronunciation shows an irregular change of Early Modern English /ɛː/ to /eɪ/ in the standard language; contrast this with the development of other words such as speak and wreak. See: Old English Nouns 'brecan', Latin Nouns 'frangō', English Nouns 'fracture'.

Verbs referencing "break"

French Nouns break, Italian Nouns break, Russian Nouns брюки, Finnish Nouns breikki, Catalan Nouns brec.