break up

Formsbreaks up, breaking up, broke up, broken up

1. 1
   end a relationshipphrasal verbidiomaticintransitive

   To end a relationship, usually a romantic or sexual one, with a partner or with each other.

   After months of arguing, they agreed it was time to break up.

   He broke up with her by text message, which her friends thought was cruel.

   Similarsplit, separate

   Note

   The partner comes in with with: she broke up with her boyfriend. A couple who end things together simply break up, with no object at all. Never make the partner a direct object, because break him up would be heard as upsetting him or making him laugh.

2. 2
   into piecesphrasal verbtransitive

   To reduce something to pieces by breaking it or separating its parts.

   Use a fork to break up any lumps in the sauce.

   The crew broke up the old concrete with jackhammers before laying the new path.

   Similarsmash, crush, shatter, fragment

   Note

   This is the phrasal verb at its most literal, and it is separable. The object can follow the particle (break up the cheese) or sit between the two words (break the cheese up), but a pronoun must go in the middle: break it up, never break up it. The same rule holds when the verb means stopping a fight or scrapping an engine.

3. 3
   into piecesphrasal verbintransitive

   To come apart or disintegrate, breaking or separating into pieces.

   Ice on the river begins to break up in early spring.

   The spacecraft broke up as it reentered the atmosphere.

   Similardisintegrate, shatter, fragment, crumble

4. 4
   group endsphrasal verbidiomaticintransitive

   Of a group or gathering, to dissolve, its members parting and going their separate ways.

   The crowd began to break up once the speeches were over.

   The meeting broke up without any agreement on the budget.

   Similardisperse, scatter, disband, adjourn

   Oppositegather, assemble, convene

   Note

   Nothing is damaged when a meeting breaks up: the gathering itself is the subject, and the verb takes no object. That sets it apart from stopping a fight, where someone outside breaks the fight up. The use is everyday English with a long history; Charles Johnstone's The Reverie (1762) has a company that broke up "much sooner than ordinary", and Moonfleet (1898) ends a scene with "So the meeting broke up".

5. 5
   stop a fightphrasal verbidiomatictransitive

   To put a stop to a fight, or to pull apart the people who are fighting.

   Security guards rushed in to break up a scuffle near the stage.

   Police broke up the brawl outside the bar and arrested three men.

   Similarstop, end, halt

6. 6
   bad signalphrasal verbintransitive

   Of a phone call or other conversation, to become hard to understand because of a bad connection; of a signal, to grow weaker or worse.

   The video signal tends to break up during heavy storms.

   Her voice was breaking up so badly that I caught only every third word.

   Note

   On a call the fault is usually pinned on the speaker: “You're breaking up” tells someone their voice is reaching you in fragments. It lives in the progressive, while the trouble lasts, and it can take on me, as Lady Gaga's “Telephone” (2009) shows, with a caller blamed for fading out on the singer. When nothing gets through at all, the call has been cut off instead.

7. 7
   deeply upsetphrasal verbtransitive

   To upset someone deeply, causing them great emotional distress or unhappiness.

   The farewell speech was enough to break up even the toughest soldiers, several of whom wept openly.

   It broke her up to see her childhood home torn down.

   Similarupset, devastate, distress

   Note

   Conan Doyle uses it in The Lost World (1912): “It quite broke the old man up.” The feeling is distress, but the same words can carry the opposite mood: in slang, something that breaks you up leaves you helpless with laughter. Only the setting tells “it broke me up” one way or the other, a farewell or a comedy sketch.

8. 8
   laugh hardphrasal verbslangidiomatictransitive or intransitive

   To be overcome with laughter, or to make someone laugh uncontrollably.

   Whenever the two hosts try to read the sponsor's ad with a straight face, they break up halfway through.

   Her impression of our boss totally broke us up.

   Note

   A slang use that belongs in talk about comedy, not in formal writing. It runs both ways: a sketch breaks the audience up, or a performer breaks up mid-scene. Because “we broke up” will be heard as ending a relationship, let the rest of the sentence make the laughter clear.

9. 9
   lose orderphrasal verbfigurativelyidiomaticintransitive

   To become disorganized, losing its earlier order or structure.

   As fatigue set in, the match began to break up, with gaps opening all over the field.

   The opposing defense broke up under sustained pressure, leaving their goalkeeper exposed.

   Similardisintegrate, collapse, crumble

10. 10
    school holidaysphrasal verbidiomaticintransitive

    Of a school, to close for vacation when a term ends.

    Most schools in the area break up a few days before Christmas.

    Once the college broke up for the summer, the campus was almost empty.

11. 11
    for scrapphrasal verbtransitive

    To cut up or take apart something, such as an old locomotive, for scrap.

    The railroad decided to break up the retired locomotives rather than pay to store them.

    Dozens of old freight cars were broken up for scrap at the yard.

    Similardismantle, scrap

    Note

    Railway writing uses it for withdrawn engines, usually in the passive. The Railway Magazine reported in 1940 that a tank engine, “the last of its class”, had been broken up; in 1948 Reginald H. Coe described tenders “in too good a condition to be broken up”, which were kept and attached to other locomotives instead.

12. 12
    noun · break-up

    Alternative spelling of breakup.

    The break-up of the empire left a dozen new countries on the map.

    She wrote half the album in the months after a painful break-up.

    Note

    The hyphen marks the noun off from the verb: a couple break up, and what follows is their break-up, while the verb itself is always written open. The plural is break-ups. This spelling covers the same ground as breakup (the end of a relationship, the splitting of an empire or a company, even the spring breaking of river ice) so the choice between the two is a matter of style, not meaning.

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