What's the difference between break and mend?

Break


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To fall in business; to become bankrupt.
  • (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.

Mend


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To repair, as anything that is torn, broken, defaced, decayed, or the like; to restore from partial decay, injury, or defacement; to patch up; to put in shape or order again; to re-create; as, to mend a garment or a machine.
  • (v. t.) To alter for the better; to set right; to reform; hence, to quicken; as, to mend one's manners or pace.
  • (v. t.) To help, to advance, to further; to add to.
  • (v. i.) To grow better; to advance to a better state; to become improved.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The reality is I like football so much, I miss football, and when I have the chance to be back I will come back.” Mourinho, who was joined by his agent Jorge Mendes to speak to children at the NorthLight school as part of the Valencia chairman Peter Lim’s Olympic scholarship, added: “It’s quite a funny career.
  • (2) A spokesperson for Lim emphasised his involvement with Salford is “philanthropic”, motivated by his interest in developing young players and has nothing to do with Valencia, Mendes or TPO.
  • (3) Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND), an outfit that previously operated under the banner of iEngage until controversy forced a rebrand , has decided that the worst it can say about Tell MAMA, the best means it can find of turning it into a satanic organisation, is to say that it associates with gays and Jews.
  • (4) Chelsea have paid the buyout clause in Costa’s contract – he shares the same agent as Mourinho, Jorge Mendes – and the club are pushing ahead with the rest of their business.
  • (5) Kenyon then moved to Chelsea, where he and Mendes negotiated Mourinho’s hiring as the new manager, the signings of Carvalho and Ferreira to join him from Porto, and Tiago Mendes, from Benfica.
  • (6) Think, too, of the savings in road widening and new carriages – money that could be spent mending what we've got, or making travel safer or more comfortable, or spent on other things.
  • (7) Made by Neal Street Productions, the indie Harris founded almost a decade ago with her childhood friend Sam Mendes and former Donmar Warehouse executive producer Caro Newling, the films have attracted widespread praise for their ambition and quality .
  • (8) I would like it to always look as fresh as the day I made it, so part of the contract is: if the glass breaks, we mend it; if the tank gets dirty, we clean it; if the shark rots, we find you a new shark."
  • (9) That Chelsea should be in partnership with Mendes and CAA in the Burnaby venture, without openly discussing it, raises many questions.
  • (10) De Blasio and Bratton have promised to mend the frayed relations between police officers and the city's minority communities.
  • (11) DNA sequence analysis of menD shows an open reading frame encoding a 52-kilodalton protein.
  • (12) The arcane wiring when electricity came along, the subsequent clumsy rewiring; the cheap flat conversion in the 1960s; the constant saga of patch and mend from occupants who never have the money or vision to remake the whole thing from scratch - all this, and more, was paralleled on the WCML on an enormous scale.
  • (13) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Van der Bellen: Austria vote a signal of hope Overcoming these strong emotions and mending the deep divisions they have caused will be a tremendously difficult task.
  • (14) Now the only question is whether Mendes is going to make the sequel.
  • (15) Harris and Mendes grew up on the BBC Television Shakespeare – adaptations of every play, broadcast between 1978 and 1985.
  • (16) Paget's disease may in some cases require recourse to surgery: (1) Fractures of bones in patients with the disease mend normally but slowly.
  • (17) Though the Bond series was in anything but trouble before Mendes’ arrival – and Craig’s – there was the sense of a certain amount of staleness towards the end of Pierce Brosnan’s run.
  • (18) In confluent group C cells, the mended sites were clustered in regions where dimer excision was as efficient as excision in the DNA of normal cells.
  • (19) However, in an interview with the Spanish radio station Cadena COPE on Wednesday evening, Mendes rejected those suggestions and was adamant Ronaldo intends to spend the rest of his career in the Spanish capital.
  • (20) Giovana Mendes was one of those who took part in protests against what she described as "the shameful political situation".