(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.
Freak
Definition:
(v. t.) To variegate; to checker; to streak.
(n.) A sudden causeless change or turn of the mind; a whim of fancy; a capricious prank; a vagary or caprice.
Example Sentences:
(1) Freaks And Geeks was my thing, based on my experiences.
(2) Although she's been performing since 2000 – in the punk-cabaret duo the Dresden Dolls , in a controversial conjoined-twin mime act called Evelyn Evelyn (they wear a specially constructed two-person dress and have been castigated by disability groups for presenting conjoined twins as circus freaks, an accusation she denies) – in her new band, Amanda Palmer And The Grand Theft Orchestra , she's suddenly become a kind of phenomenon.
(3) Klitschko is a self-confessed control freak; so Fury was trying to rattle him out of his rhythm.
(4) 5.54pm BST It looks like the senate office buildings are returning to normal, just as the FREAK OUT party was getting exciting.
(5) You couldn't get much more bohemian than the music playing in this room of tiny round tables, first French crooner Serge Gainsbourg and then cabaret freak Scott Walker wailing of their obelisk-size pain.
(6) Over the summer his father, Jimmy, died from throat cancer , and his cousin, Hannah, was killed in a freak accident while on holiday.
(7) Although achilles tears are typically freak injuries, this hasn't stopped fans and media members alike from blaming Bryant's injuries on head coach Mike D'Antoni and his unwillingness, or inability, to get Bryant off the court for any significant amount of time.
(8) After almost 24 hours of being told I stank and generally being treated like a contagious freak, I was so grateful for these ministrations that I went to hug them.
(9) 1.23am GMT Red Sox 0 - Cardinals 1, top of the 4th Dustin Pedroia, quiet most of this postseason, is up to salvage anything here, it seems improbable that these Sox hitters can be rendered mute by Lance freaking Lynn, but so it goes.
(10) An African woman sold into slavery, Baartman was brought to London in 1810 as the "Hottentot Venus" and exhibited as a freak of nature in London and France.
(11) Sharknado, a satirical disaster film featuring man-eating sharks let loose on Los Angeles by a freak cyclone, premiered on SyFy in 2013 and became a cult hit, gaining some traction later as a theatrical release.
(12) Yes, yes, Richard Gere in American Gigolo, Cary Grant in North by Northwest, Steve McQueen in Bullitt, Colin Firth and Daniel Craig in whatever, blah blah freaking blah.
(13) It was common for people to insist I must be Latvian, as they were so freaked out by the idea of meeting someone from England.
(14) Nor is it an excuse for children to demand the hiring of a freaking limo.
(15) The Interview will become a global must-see and their Soviet-style control-freak instincts will look silly and culpable.
(16) But the sale of the house in Chester was held up for several months by a freak accident, a burst water main under the foundations which flooded the ground floor and made it uninhabitable.
(17) Where other sources of Georgian entertainment, from public dissections and freak shows to Bedlam and the Foundling Hospital, have, for one reason or another, fallen by the wayside, the exhibition of exotic beasts remains popular enough for someone such as Gill, a self-described “animal nutritionist”, to make a fortune out of it.
(18) This alternative economic activity, which often looked like a freak show – it attracted young people in.
(19) SPOILER ALERT: This blog discusses plot points from Freak Show, the fourth season of American Horror Story.
(20) Little ones might freak out a bit at the wax characters and the gloomy dark but this is a fun way to bring a fairly weighty school text to life.