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break

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Medical, Legal, Financial, Acronyms, Idioms, Wikipedia, Hutchinson 0.01 sec.

(1) To temporarily or permanently stop executing, printing or transmitting.

(2) In cryptography, to decrypt a ciphertext without knowing the key or to find a flaw in an encryption algorithm or implementation that permits such cryptanalysis.


1.break - To cause to be broken. "Your latest patch to the editor broke the paragraph commands."
2.break - (Of a program) To stop temporarily, so that it may debugged. The place where it stops is a "breakpoint".
3.break - To send an EIA-232 break (two character widths of line high) over a serial line.
4.break - [Unix] To strike whatever key currently causes the tty driver to send SIGINT to the current process. Normally, break, delete or control-C does this.
5.break - "break break" may be said to interrupt a conversation (this is an example of verb doubling). This usage comes from radio communications, which in turn probably came from landline telegraph/teleprinter usage, as badly abused in the Citizen's Band craze.
6.break - pipeline break.
7.break - break statement.

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The son strained and strained, but with all his efforts was unable to break the Bundle.
There, in the back street he found one, the Break of Day.
They were happy to say that the reverend gentleman had been moved by the Spirit to accept the call, and on the ensuing Sabbath would break the bread of life for the brethren or break his neck in the attempt.
 
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