breaker

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breaker

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From Middle English breker, brekere, equivalent to break +‎ -er. Cognate with Dutch breker, German Low German Breker, German Brecher.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈbɹeɪkə/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (US) enPR: brāʹkər, IPA^(key): /ˈbɹeɪkɚ/
• Rhymes: -eɪkə(ɹ)

breaker (plural breakers)

1. Something that breaks (something else).

   Synonyms: destroyer, wrecker

   a breaker of men's souls

2. A machine for breaking rocks, or for breaking coal at the mines.

   Coordinate terms: crusher, dresser

3. The building in which such a machine is placed.

   at the coal breaker

   A: Is John at the tipple? B: No, he's at the breaker today.

4. (often plural) A person or company that specializes in breaking things; their yard.

   Synonyms: (often synonymous) scrapper, wrecker, knacker; (their yard) breaker's yard, more at wreck yard

   1. (primarily plural) Ellipsis of shipbreaker; a shipbreaking company or its yard.
   2. (primarily plural) Ellipsis of car breaker; a car breaking company or its yard.
   3. Ellipsis of horsebreaker.
      • 1831-1850, William Youatt, On the Structure and the Diseases of the Horse:

        A hasty and passionate breaker will often make a really goodtempered young horse an inveterate gibber

      • 1886 October – 1887 January, H Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:

        My beauty endures even as I endure; still, if thou wilt, oh rash man, have thy will; but blame not me if passion mount thy reason, as the Egyptian breakers used to mount a colt, and guide it whither thou wilt not.

5. (chiefly in the plural) A wave breaking into foam against the shore, or against a sandbank, or a rock or reef near the surface, considered a useful warning to ships of an underwater hazard
   • 1919, W Somerset Maugham, chapter 53, in The Moon and Sixpence, : Grosset & Dunlap Publishers , →OCLC, pages 279–280:

     Now and then in the lagoon you hear the leaping of a fish […]. And above all, ceaseless like time, is the dull roar of the breakers on the reef.

   • 1925, Ezra Pound, Canto I:

     And then went down to the ship,
     Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea

   • 1979, Stan Rogers (lyrics and music), “The Flowers of Bermuda” (track 6), in Between the Breaks ... Live!, Dundas, Ontario: Fogarty's Cove Music:

     There came a cry "Oh, there be breakers dead ahead!" / From the collier Nightingale

7. (colloquial) A breakdancer.

   Synonyms: B-boy (masculine), B-girl (feminine)

8. (US, dated) A user of CB radio.
   • 2015, Dave Wise, Stuart Wise, Like A Summer With A Thousand Julys:

     Their radios had been blocked by a breaker calling himself Yankee Bucket Mouth.

10. (electrical engineering) Ellipsis of circuit breaker.

    breaker panel

breaker

1. (US, dated) Used to open a conversation or call for a response on CB radio.

   breaker one nine

   • 1977, Smokey and the Bandit, spoken by Sheriff Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason):

     Breaker to the Bandit

• spring breaker

Probably from Spanish barrica (“barrel”). Doublet of barrique.

breaker (plural breakers)

1. A small cask of liquid kept permanently in a ship’s boat in case of shipwreck.
   • , J Meade Falkner, Moonfleet, London; Toronto, Ont.: Jonathan Cape, published 1934, →OCLC:

     Then the conversation broke off, and there was little more talking, only a noise of men going backwards and forwards, and of putting down of kegs and the hollow gurgle of good liquor being poured from breakers into the casks.

• rebreak

• IPA^(key): /bʁɛ.kœʁ/ ~ /bʁe.kœʁ/

breaker m (plural breakers)

1. circuit breaker

   Synonym: disjoncteur

• IPA^(key): /bʁɛ.ke/ ~ /bʁe.ke/

breaker

1. (tennis) to break (win a game when receiving)

• débreaker

breaker m (uncountable)

1. breaker; circuit breaker