(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.
Crack
Definition:
(v. t.) To break or burst, with or without entire separation of the parts; as, to crack glass; to crack nuts.
(v. t.) To rend with grief or pain; to affect deeply with sorrow; hence, to disorder; to distract; to craze.
(v. t.) To cause to sound suddenly and sharply; to snap; as, to crack a whip.
(v. t.) To utter smartly and sententiously; as, to crack a joke.
(v. t.) To cry up; to extol; -- followed by up.
(v. i.) To burst or open in chinks; to break, with or without quite separating into parts.
(v. i.) To be ruined or impaired; to fail.
(v. i.) To utter a loud or sharp, sudden sound.
(v. i.) To utter vain, pompous words; to brag; to boast; -- with of.
(n.) A partial separation of parts, with or without a perceptible opening; a chink or fissure; a narrow breach; a crevice; as, a crack in timber, or in a wall, or in glass.
(n.) Rupture; flaw; breach, in a moral sense.
(n.) A sharp, sudden sound or report; the sound of anything suddenly burst or broken; as, the crack of a falling house; the crack of thunder; the crack of a whip.
(n.) The tone of voice when changed at puberty.
(n.) Mental flaw; a touch of craziness; partial insanity; as, he has a crack.
(n.) A crazy or crack-brained person.
(n.) A boast; boasting.
(n.) Breach of chastity.
(n.) A boy, generally a pert, lively boy.
(n.) A brief time; an instant; as, to be with one in a crack.
(n.) Free conversation; friendly chat.
(a.) Of superior excellence; having qualities to be boasted of.
Example Sentences:
(1) They’re no crack force either; many are rather portly!
(2) While superheroes like “superman” (21st in SplashData’s 2014 rankings) and “batman” (24th) may be popular choices for passwords, the results if they are cracked could be anything other than super – and users will only have themselves to blame.
(3) However, we have observed cracks on the Dacron fibers, fiber fracture, fiber protrusion, and poor attachment to the diaphragm, which can cause potentially disastrous complications.
(4) But instead, he is going to crack under public anger over the huge amounts senior bankers have been paying themselves.
(5) It is found that, in contrast to most metallic materials yet in keeping with many ceramics, there are no distinct fracture morphologies in pyro-carbons which are characteristic of a specific mode of loading; fracture surfaces appear to be identical for both catastrophic and subcritical crack growth under either sustained or cyclic loading.
(6) Iowa senator Chuck Grassley, the Republican who chairs the Senate judiciary committee, introduced legislation on Tuesday that would crack down on jurisdictions that provide safe harbor for undocumented migrants by withholding some federal funding for state and local entities if they decline to cooperate with the government on the holding or transferring of undocumented migrants with criminal records.
(7) In a single letter in February 2005, Charles urged a badger cull to prevent the spread of bovine tuberculosis – damning opponents to the cull as “intellectually dishonest”; lobbied for his preferred person to be appointed to crack down on the mistreatment of farmers by supermarkets; proposed his own aide to brief Downing Street on the design of new hospitals; and urged Blair to tackle an EU directive limiting the use of herbal alternative medicines in the UK.
(8) On second impacts, the GSI rose considerably because the shell and liner of the DH-151 cracked and the suspension of the "141" stretched during the first blow.
(9) 9.18pm: The Ohio Democrat Dennis Kucinich has a crack, and he's taking no prisoners: "We've heard Mr Toyoda say that Toyota grew to fast.
(10) Here come the Dodgers for another crack at it in the second.
(11) That led to the second breakthrough, as the once formidable laws of omerta - silence punishable by death - cracked.
(12) The passengers were then flown to an Australian icebreaker, the Aurora Australis, which had cracked through ice floes and was now sailing towards Australia's Casey research base.
(13) SEM of the resulting surface showed rounded fragments of enamel rods, enamel melting, cracks, and smooth-edged voids.
(14) According to the NYPD commissioner, Bill Bratton, whose voice almost cracked with emotion as he addressed the media on Saturday evening , the “digital warning poster” featuring a picture of Brinsley and his whereabouts arrived at the data centre at 2.47pm.
(15) As subcritical crack velocities under cyclic loading were found to be many orders of magnitude faster than those measured under equivalent monotonic loads and to occur at typically 45% lower stress-intensity levels, cyclic fatigue in pyrolytic carbon-coated graphite is reasoned to be a vital consideration in the design and life-prediction procedures of prosthetic devices manufactured from this material.
(16) It is hence impossible to wiretap, intercept or crack the information transmitted through it,” Xinhua reported after Tuesday’s launch.
(17) He just never dreamed it would be life without parole.” Obama reduces sentences of 46 inmates convicted of nonviolent drug crimes Read more As his sister put it, Bennett “got caught up” in a five-man drug ring run by an old friend, John Hansley, to pay for his addiction to crack.
(18) Spencer has now heard that Andy, who got the boat remember, has been cracking on to Louise, even though Jamie warned him it would be like jumping into a polar bear's nest.
(19) "I urge both the monks and the lay Tibetans of the area not to do anything that might be used as a pretext by the local authorities to massively crack down on them.
(20) Of 26 patients treated to date, 16 have been crack cocaine users.