(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.
Stave
Definition:
(n.) One of a number of narrow strips of wood, or narrow iron plates, placed edge to edge to form the sides, covering, or lining of a vessel or structure; esp., one of the strips which form the sides of a cask, a pail, etc.
(n.) One of the cylindrical bars of a lantern wheel; one of the bars or rounds of a rack, a ladder, etc.
(n.) A metrical portion; a stanza; a staff.
(n.) The five horizontal and parallel lines on and between which musical notes are written or pointed; the staff.
(n.) To break in a stave or the staves of; to break a hole in; to burst; -- often with in; as, to stave a cask; to stave in a boat.
(n.) To push, as with a staff; -- with off.
(n.) To delay by force or craft; to drive away; -- usually with off; as, to stave off the execution of a project.
(n.) To suffer, or cause, to be lost by breaking the cask.
(n.) To furnish with staves or rundles.
(n.) To render impervious or solid by driving with a calking iron; as, to stave lead, or the joints of pipes into which lead has been run.
(v. i.) To burst in pieces by striking against something; to dash into fragments.
Example Sentences:
(1) Ukraine has said it needs $35 billion over the next two years to stave off bankruptcy.
(2) "They have staved off closure for a while but it did seem like they were flogging a dead horse and towards the end it did seem like the prices were really not attractive," said Jelensky, who said he preferred to buy online.
(3) Newspapers have been lobbying hard to stave off a Leveson law of any kind, arguing that the press is already subject to laws ranging from libel to data protection and computer misuse acts to guard against illegal activities.
(4) Hammond’s budget measures promised to stave off the looming crisis for Southwold – at least temporarily.
(5) On Monday, after months of intense talks with two US hedge funds, the Co-op Group – which also owns pharmacies, grocers and funeral homes – was forced to cede majority control of its bank as part of its battle to plug a £1.5bn capital shortfall and stave off nationalisation.
(6) Deep cuts to the US food stamps programme, designed to keep low-income Americans out of hunger in the aftermath of the economic recession, have forced increasing numbers of families such as theirs to rely on food banks and community organisations to stave off hunger.
(7) David Cameron should be instructing his ministers to back off councils because we already know there’s a huge funding gap in adult social care.” Cameron ‘buying off’ Tory MPs threatening to rebel over council cuts Read more Earlier this week, Oxfordshire county council received an extra £8.9m over two years as part of a government deal for rural counties in an attempt to stave off a potential backbench Tory rebellion at Westminster.
(8) While Auden and Britten are much grander characters than, say, Maggie Smith's nervy vicar's wife in Bed Among the Lentils or Thora Hird's Doris in A Cream Cracker Under the Settee trying to stave off the care home, they share the same disappointments – loneliness, self-doubt, age.
(9) On Friday, at the end of a week which saw the spectre of bankruptcy loom large over the ancient capital, the Italian government said it had approved a last-minute decree that would give an urgently-needed injection of funds to the city, thus staving off imminent disaster.
(10) The UN seeks $2.1bn to stave off the worst, while the UK alone has licensed more than £3.3bn of arms sales since the war began almost two years ago.
(11) Forage was ensiled in 10 900-kg concrete stave silos; 2 per year were assigned to one of five treatments consisting of control, treatment with an enzyme-chemical product, or treatment with one of three different types of lactic acid bacterial inoculants.
(12) It may help stave off a possible crisis of leadership in the event of the Dalai Lama's death.
(13) Uber has been given a boost in its attempts to stave off proposed changes to regulating the taxi trade in London , after the competition authority said the reforms would not serve the public interest.
(14) Along with Hytner's own production of the comedy One Man Two Guv'nors, it has staved off the financial difficulties that have troubled so many organisations in less commercial artforms since the government funding cuts of 2010.
(15) It is also evidence of a realisation that following the UN climate change talks in Paris the world is fast moving away from fossil fuels and towards low-carbon solutions in an attempt to stave off global warming.
(16) As we reported on November 24th 2010 : Trades unions brought parts of Portugal to a grinding halt as a general strike shut down most public transport in protest at cuts being introduced to stave off an Irish-style debt crisis.
(17) The company, which runs 1,270 shops, half of them in the UK, and employs 10,000 people worldwide, needs to raise around £180m to stave off collapse.
(18) The coming debate is about two things: what governments can do to attempt to regulate, or otherwise stave off, the now predictably terrifying consequences of global warming beyond 2C by the end of the century.
(19) Thames Water , one of seven companies in southern and eastern England that introduced restrictions on water use on 5 April, said the recent downpours may have staved off further curbs against drought but did not amount to "a long-term fix".
(20) Anything that comes out of the leadership of those two Committees that is labeled "NSA reform" is almost certain to be designed to achieve the opposite effect: to stave off real changes in lieu of illusory tinkering whose real purpose will be to placate rising anger.