(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.
Function
Definition:
(n.) The act of executing or performing any duty, office, or calling; per formance.
(n.) The appropriate action of any special organ or part of an animal or vegetable organism; as, the function of the heart or the limbs; the function of leaves, sap, roots, etc.; life is the sum of the functions of the various organs and parts of the body.
(n.) The natural or assigned action of any power or faculty, as of the soul, or of the intellect; the exertion of an energy of some determinate kind.
(n.) The course of action which peculiarly pertains to any public officer in church or state; the activity appropriate to any business or profession.
(n.) A quantity so connected with another quantity, that if any alteration be made in the latter there will be a consequent alteration in the former. Each quantity is said to be a function of the other. Thus, the circumference of a circle is a function of the diameter. If x be a symbol to which different numerical values can be assigned, such expressions as x2, 3x, Log. x, and Sin. x, are all functions of x.
(v. i.) Alt. of Functionate
Example Sentences:
(1) Activity of Na,K-ATPase activity was measured as a functional marker for synaptosomal membranes.
(2) Herpesviruses such as EBV, HSV, and human herpes virus-6 (HHV-6) have a marked tropism for cells of the immune system and therefore infection by these viruses may result in alterations of immune functions, leading at times to a state of immunosuppression.
(3) Among the pathological or abnormal ECGs (25.6%) prevailed the vegetative-functional heart diseases with 92%.
(4) The influence of the various concepts for the induction of lateral structure formation in lipid membranes on integral functional units like ionophores is demonstrated by analysing the single channel current fluctuations of gramicidin in bimolecular lipid membranes.
(5) We also show that proliferation of primary amnion cells is not dependent on a high c-fos expression, suggesting that the function of c-fos is more likely to be associated with other cellular functions in the differentiated amnion cell.
(6) Elements in the skin therefore seemed to enhance nerve regeneration and function.
(7) The possibility that the ventral nerve photoreceptor cells serve a neurosecretory function in the adult Limulus is discussed.
(8) Renal micropuncture and microdissection techniques with ultramicro fluid analysis have been applied to evaluate single nephron function in the skate, Raja erinacea.
(9) We have amended and added to Fabian's tables giving a functional assessment of individual masticatory muscles.
(10) Models able to describe the events of cellular growth and division and the dynamics of cell populations are useful for the understanding of functional control mechanisms and for the theoretical support for automated analysis of flow cytometric data and of cell volume distributions.
(11) Tests showed the cells survive and function normally in animals and reverse movement problems caused by Parkinson's in monkeys.
(12) Subsequently, the study of bundle branch block and A-V block cases revealed that no explicit correlation existed between histopathological changes and functional disturbances nor between disturbances in conduction (i.e.
(13) We have examined the insertion of bovine 17 alpha-hydroxylase (P45017 alpha) into the endoplasmic reticulum of COS 1 cells to evaluate the functional role of its hydrophobic amino-terminal sequence and membrane insertion.
(14) We sought additional evidence for an inverse relationship between functional CTL-target cell affinity on the one hand, and susceptibility of the CTL-mediated killing to inhibition by alpha LFA-1 and alpha Lyt-2,3 monoclonal antibodies on the other hand.
(15) The 14C-aminopyrine breath test was used to measure liver function in 14 normal subjects, 16 patients with alcoholic cirrhosis, 14 alcoholics without cirrhosis, and 29 patients taking a variety of drugs.
(16) The strongest predictor of non-sudden cardiac death was the New York Heart Association functional class.
(17) We maximize an objective function that includes both total production rate and product concentration.
(18) Hypertensive disorders in pregnancy are frequently accompanied by deteriorated renal functions and by pathological lesions in the glomeruli.
(19) Based on several previous studies, which demonstrated that sorbitol accumulation in human red blood cells (RBCs) was a function of ambient glucose concentrations, either in vitro or in vivo, our investigations were conducted to determine if RBC sorbitol accumulation would correlate with sorbitol accumulation in lens and nerve tissue of diabetic rats; the effect of sorbinil in reducing sorbitol levels in lens and nerve tissue of diabetic rats would be reflected by changes in RBC sorbitol; and sorbinil would reduce RBC sorbitol in diabetic man.
(20) However, the relationships between sociometric status and social perception varied as a function of task.