Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The act or process of breaking.
  • noun The condition of having been broken or ruptured.
  • noun A break, rupture, or crack, especially in bone or cartilage.
  • noun The characteristic manner in which a mineral breaks.
  • noun The characteristic appearance of the surface of a broken mineral.
  • noun Geology A crack or fault in a rock.
  • intransitive verb To cause to break: synonym: break.
  • intransitive verb To undergo a break in (a bone).
  • intransitive verb To disrupt or destroy as if by breaking.
  • intransitive verb To abuse or misuse flagrantly, as by violating rules.
  • intransitive verb Slang To cause to laugh heartily.
  • intransitive verb To undergo a fracture.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In phonology, same as breaking, 2.
  • To break; cause a fracture in; crack: as, to fracture a bone or the skull.
  • Synonyms Cleave, Split, etc. See rend, and fracture, n.
  • To break; undergo fracture.
  • noun A breaking or a break; especially, a partial or total separation of parts of a continuous solid body under the action of a force; specifically, in surgery, the breaking of a bone.
  • noun A broken surface, with reference to texture or configuration, or to manner of breaking; specifically, in mineralogy, the characteristic breakage of a substance, or appearance presented on a surface other than that of cleavage: as, a compact fracture; a fibrous fracture; foliated, striated, or conchoidal fracture, etc.
  • noun Forcible separation or disunion; quarreling.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To cause a fracture or fractures in; to break; to burst asunder; to crack; to separate the continuous parts of
  • noun The act of breaking or snapping asunder; rupture; breach.
  • noun (Surg.) The breaking of a bone.
  • noun (Min.) The texture of a freshly broken surface
  • noun (Surg.) a fracture in which the bone is broken into several parts.
  • noun (Surg.) a fracture of the bone combined with the lesion of some artery, nervous trunk, or joint.
  • noun (Surg.) a fracture in which there is an open wound from the surface down to the fracture.
  • noun (Surg.) a fracture in which the bone only is ruptured. It does not communicate with the surface by an open wound.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun the act of breaking, or something that has broken, especially that in bone or cartilage
  • noun geology a fault or crack in a rock
  • verb to break, or cause something to break

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb break into pieces
  • noun breaking of hard tissue such as bone
  • verb become fractured
  • verb fracture a bone of
  • verb violate or abuse
  • noun the act of cracking something
  • verb interrupt, break, or destroy
  • verb break (a bone)
  • noun (geology) a crack in the earth's crust resulting from the displacement of one side with respect to the other

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin frāctūra, from frāctus, past participle of frangere, to break; see bhreg- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French, from Latin fractura ("a breach, fracture, cleft"), from frangere ("to break"), past participle fractus, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrag-, from whence also English break. See fraction.

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