(v. t.) To strain apart; to sever by fracture; to divide with violence; as, to break a rope or chain; to break a seal; to break an axle; to break rocks or coal; to break a lock.
(v. t.) To lay open as by breaking; to divide; as, to break a package of goods.
(v. t.) To lay open, as a purpose; to disclose, divulge, or communicate.
(v. t.) To infringe or violate, as an obligation, law, or promise.
(v. t.) To interrupt; to destroy the continuity of; to dissolve or terminate; as, to break silence; to break one's sleep; to break one's journey.
(v. t.) To destroy the completeness of; to remove a part from; as, to break a set.
(v. t.) To destroy the arrangement of; to throw into disorder; to pierce; as, the cavalry were not able to break the British squares.
(v. t.) To shatter to pieces; to reduce to fragments.
(v. t.) To exchange for other money or currency of smaller denomination; as, to break a five dollar bill.
(v. t.) To destroy the strength, firmness, or consistency of; as, to break flax.
(v. t.) To weaken or impair, as health, spirit, or mind.
(v. t.) To diminish the force of; to lessen the shock of, as a fall or blow.
(v. t.) To impart, as news or information; to broach; -- with to, and often with a modified word implying some reserve; as, to break the news gently to the widow; to break a purpose cautiously to a friend.
(v. t.) To tame; to reduce to subjection; to make tractable; to discipline; as, to break a horse to the harness or saddle.
(v. t.) To destroy the financial credit of; to make bankrupt; to ruin.
(v. t.) To destroy the official character and standing of; to cashier; to dismiss.
(v. i.) To come apart or divide into two or more pieces, usually with suddenness and violence; to part; to burst asunder.
(v. i.) To open spontaneously, or by pressure from within, as a bubble, a tumor, a seed vessel, a bag.
(v. i.) To burst forth; to make its way; to come to view; to appear; to dawn.
(v. i.) To burst forth violently, as a storm.
(v. i.) To open up; to be scattered; to be dissipated; as, the clouds are breaking.
(v. i.) To become weakened in constitution or faculties; to lose health or strength.
(v. i.) To be crushed, or overwhelmed with sorrow or grief; as, my heart is breaking.
(v. i.) To make an abrupt or sudden change; to change the gait; as, to break into a run or gallop.
(v. i.) To fail in musical quality; as, a singer's voice breaks when it is strained beyond its compass and a tone or note is not completed, but degenerates into an unmusical sound instead. Also, to change in tone, as a boy's voice at puberty.
(v. i.) To fall out; to terminate friendship.
(v. t.) An opening made by fracture or disruption.
(v. t.) An interruption of continuity; change of direction; as, a break in a wall; a break in the deck of a ship.
(v. t.) A projection or recess from the face of a building.
(v. t.) An opening or displacement in the circuit, interrupting the electrical current.
(v. t.) An interruption; a pause; as, a break in friendship; a break in the conversation.
(v. t.) An interruption in continuity in writing or printing, as where there is an omission, an unfilled line, etc.
(v. t.) The first appearing, as of light in the morning; the dawn; as, the break of day; the break of dawn.
(v. t.) A large four-wheeled carriage, having a straight body and calash top, with the driver's seat in front and the footman's behind.
(v. t.) A device for checking motion, or for measuring friction. See Brake, n. 9 & 10.
(n.) See Commutator.
Example Sentences:
(1) Lucy and Ed will combine coverage of hard and breaking news with a commitment to investigative journalism, which their track record so clearly demonstrates”.
(2) They spend about 4.3 minutes of each working hour on a smoking break, the study shows.
(3) The mechanism by which pertussis toxin (PT) breaks the unresponsiveness of delayed-type hypersensitivity (DTH) to sheep red blood cells (SRBC) was examined in B10 mice.
(4) After absorption of labeled glucose, two pools of trehalose are found in dormant spores, one of which is extractable without breaking the spores, and the other, only after the spores are disintegrated.
(5) The following possible explanations were discussed: a) the tested psychotropic drugs block prostaglandin receptors in the stomach; b) the test substances react with prostaglandin in the nutritive solution; c) the substances stimulate metabolic processes in the stomach wall that break down prostaglandin.
(6) The ability of ligand to stimulate its own synthesis and that of its receptor suggests the presence of an autocrine positive feedback loop, however we were unable to break this loop in the breast cancer cells by antibodies that blocked the interaction of TGF alpha with the EGF receptor.
(7) Neutral sucrose density sedimentation patterns indicate that neutron-induced double strand-breaks sometimes occur in clusters of more than 100 in the same phage and that the effeciency with which double strand-breaks form is about 50 times that of gamma-induced double strand-breaks.
(8) Possible explanations of the clinical gains include 1) psychological encouragement, 2) improvements of mechanical efficiency, 3) restoration of cardiovascular fitness, thus breaking a vicous circle of dyspnoea, inactivity and worsening dyspnoea, 4) strengthening of the body musculature, thus reducing the proportion of anaerobic work, 5) biochemical adaptations reducing glycolysis in the active tissues, and 6) indirect responses to such factors as group support, with advice on smoking habits, breathing patterns and bronchial hygiene.
(9) At high luminances, the temporal, but not spatial, properties of this mechanism break down in a manner which had not been studied.Low-frequency inhibitory processThis process is manifest as a decrease in sensitivity from that of the simple excitatory process.
(10) These experiments represent the first occasion that the sequence specificity of a DNA damaging agent, which causes only double-strand breaks, has been determined to the exact base-pair in intact cells.
(11) The OPL first appears as a thin, discontinuous break in the cytoblast layer that is frequently interrupted by the profiles of migrating neuro- and glioblasts.
(12) Celebrity woodlanders Tax breaks and tree-hugging already draw the wealthy and well-known to buy British forests.
(13) But we need politicians to break out of historical routines.
(14) For Burroughs, who had been publishing ground-breaking books for 20 years without much appreciable financial return, it was association with fame and the music industry, as well as the possible benefits: a wider readership, film hook-ups and more money.
(15) Once you've invested many years in a career, figuring out how to take time out and then return to a role that's comparable to the one you left (or as comparable as you want it to be) requires more than confidence and enthusiasm - employers need to actively acknowledge the benefits of such breaks and be more receptive to those seeking to return”.
(16) A dose-dependent increase in chromatid lesions, i.e., achromatic lesions, chromatid breaks, chromatid deletions and triradial or quandriradial chromosomal exchange fiqures, was found.
(17) From the stress-strain curve the following values were selected: strain, stress, and slope at 80 mmHg equivalent pressure (1 mmHg = 133.3 Pa); maximum stress, strain, and slope; and breaking stress, strain, and slope if the sample broke.
(18) Everyone worked hard, but it is fair to pick out Willian because of his work-rate, quality on the ball, participation in the first goal and quality of the second.” It had been Willian’s fizzed cross, 11 minutes before the break, which Dragovic had nodded inadvertently inside Shovkovskiy’s near post to earn the hosts their initial lead.
(19) The possibility that mammalian DNA topoisomerase II is an intracellular target which mediates drug-induced DNA breaks is supported by the following studies using 4'-(9-acridinylamino)methane-sulfon-m-anisidide (m-AMSA): (a) a single m-AMSA-dependent DNA cleavage activity copurified with calf thymus DNA topoisomerase II activity at all chromatographic steps of the enzyme purification; (b) m-AMSA-induced DNA cleavage by this purified activity resulted in the covalent attachment of protein to the 5'-ends of the DNA via a tyrosyl phosphate bond.
(20) The authorities had said they used water cannon, teargas and smoke grenades to break up the protest.
Broach
Definition:
(n.) A spit.
(n.) An awl; a bodkin; also, a wooden rod or pin, sharpened at each end, used by thatchers.
(n.) A tool of steel, generally tapering, and of a polygonal form, with from four to eight cutting edges, for smoothing or enlarging holes in metal; sometimes made smooth or without edges, as for burnishing pivot holes in watches; a reamer. The broach for gun barrels is commonly square and without taper.
(n.) A straight tool with file teeth, made of steel, to be pressed through irregular holes in metal that cannot be dressed by revolving tools; a drift.
(n.) A broad chisel for stonecutting.
(n.) A spire rising from a tower.
(n.) A clasp for fastening a garment. See Brooch.
(n.) A spitlike start, on the head of a young stag.
(n.) The stick from which candle wicks are suspended for dipping.
(n.) The pin in a lock which enters the barrel of the key.
(n.) To spit; to pierce as with a spit.
(n.) To tap; to pierce, as a cask, in order to draw the liquor. Hence: To let out; to shed, as blood.
(n.) To open for the first time, as stores.
(n.) To make public; to utter; to publish first; to put forth; to introduce as a topic of conversation.
(n.) To cause to begin or break out.
(n.) To shape roughly, as a block of stone, by chiseling with a coarse tool.
(n.) To enlarge or dress (a hole), by using a broach.
Example Sentences:
(1) Patients often fear that resuming sex will be dangerous to their perceived fragile health status, while nursing staff can be reluctant to broach a subject which may cause embarrassment to both parties.
(2) Though it has a relatively small readership, with around 104,000 print and digital subscribers by the end of 2014, it retained an outsize influence for its coverage of the mainland and willingness to broach controversial topics such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing.
(3) He was also given a book on humour and religion – perhaps as a way to broach the topic lightly.
(4) The state of neuroscientific ideas and methodical possibilities on the theme is not only broached but also discussed in connection with the treatment (in the sense of an optimal coordination between brain and environment).
(5) Auerbach has disappeared before I can broach the subject, but Carney is equable.
(6) Gondry unearths long-buried resentments that he maintains could never even have been broached without the camera running.
(7) This paper focuses on a neglected aspect of combined therapy: broaching and exploring this question with one's individual patient.
(8) The independent inquiry into child sexual abuse in Rotherham, which involved the abuse of predominantly white girls by predominantly Pakistani men, even suggested that the unforgivable failure of the Labour council to take action was associated with a reluctance to broach ethnically sensitive issues.
(9) In a tweet this spring, Rodman asked Kim to "do him a solid" by releasing Bae and last week he told the Huffington Post that he would broach the issue during his trip.
(10) Bone fragments left in the interosseous space and bone screws that broached the opposite part of the cortex were common findings.
(11) A TRIAD OF FACTORS CAN FAVORABLY INFLUENCE THE MAINTENANCE OF SEXUAL POTENCY AFTER RADICAL PROSTATECTOMY: the surgical avoidance of cavernous neurovascular bundles, the preoperative interest of the surgeon in broaching the subject with the patient and the continued encouragement given the patient by his attending physician as to probable preservation of sexual competency following the surgical procedure.
(12) Nevertheless, the simultaneous involvement of those tissues by ethanol has not been broached in medical literature.
(13) In documentation of that fact, we have presented the case of a 50-year-old man who swallowed an endodontic broach during endodontic treatment; the instrument passed through the gastrointestinal tract without difficulty.
(14) Tooth movement was quantified from enlarged cephalograms by measuring the position of a reproducible landmark on the molar cleat with respect to either zygomatic amalgam implants or a barbed broach placed submucosally on the palate.
(15) The US secretary of state, John Kerry , broached this issue again with Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, at the weekend.
(16) Newman had been accused of war crimes after broaching the subject of the Korean war with his guide.
(17) "She would never accept outside help if I tried to initiate it and I could never really broach the subject with her."
(18) A barbed broach covered by cotton fibers is used as a matrix to carry blue inlay wax into the canal prepared for a post.
(19) Is it nearer the truth to state that Cameron and Osborne only broached the subject of tax avoidance after being put under pressure to do so after excellent work by investigative journalists and Margaret Hodge’s public accounts committee?
(20) Its site probably determines whether a resulting meningocele widens the intradiploic space or broaches the cranial floor.