breakdown
Pluralbreakdowns
Often confused with break down
- 1A failure, especially a mechanical one that stops a machine or vehicle from working.
The factory line ground to a halt after a breakdown in the main conveyor.
Frequent breakdowns made the old bus unreliable for the morning commute.
Similarfailure, malfunction, fault
Note
The noun was made directly from the phrasal verb break down, so a breakdown is simply whatever has broken down. Its natural partners are things that ought to keep running: an engine, a line, a service. The 1956 Railway Magazine line about the breakdown of public transport services shows how easily the mechanical meaning stretches from one machine to a whole working system.
- 2A sudden worsening of physical health or, more often, mental stability, leaving a person unable to carry on with normal activities.
The constant pressure at work eventually triggered a complete breakdown.
Several breakdowns over the years left her wary of demanding jobs.
Note
In everyday speech, a breakdown on its own usually means a mental one, so "she had a breakdown" needs no adjective. Where precision matters, mental breakdown, as in Jack London's The Iron Heel (1908), removes any doubt. A physical collapse is the rarer reading. The natural verbs are have and suffer.
- 3A detailed listing or categorization of the separate parts or components that make up something.
The report included a full breakdown of costs by department.
She asked for a breakdown of the project into smaller tasks.
Similaritemization, analysis, rundown, classification
Note
Here nothing fails. The word belongs to reports, accounts and budgets. It usually takes of for the whole and by for the dividing line: a breakdown of costs by department, or little useful breakdown by routes or traffic type. Without an article it means itemization in general. With a or the, it means one particular table or list.
- 4A serious failure affecting a relationship, or a disruption of a system's functioning or organization.
The breakdown of trust between the partners doomed the business.
Repeated communication breakdowns caused the rescue effort to fail.
Similarcollapse, failure, disintegration
Note
The figurative failure of trust, talks, order or even an empire. Jack London's The Iron Heel (1908) speaks of the breakdown of the Roman Empire. Robert Browning's Paracelsus (1835) writes it break-down, a reminder that the noun was once felt as two words joined. Today it is written solid, and it pairs readily with abstract nouns: a breakdown of trust, a communication breakdown.
- 5A vehicle or other machine that has suffered a mechanical failure and stopped working.
The highway patrol cleared the breakdown before rush hour.
Two breakdowns on the same stretch caused long delays.
- 6The breaking of chemical bonds within a compound to produce simpler compounds or elements.
Enzymes speed up the breakdown of starch into glucose.
Repeated breakdowns of the catalyst reduced the reaction's efficiency.
Similardecomposition, degradation
Oppositesynthesis
Note
A chemist's breakdown happens to a molecule, not a machine. It is the everyday noun for decomposition, whether in digestion or under heat. The usual frame is breakdown of one substance into others: the breakdown of starch into glucose. Like the itemizing sense, it grows from the idea of separating a thing into its parts. Here the parts are literal fragments of a compound.
- 7A part of a piece of music that differs from the rest by featuring improvisation or by being stripped down to fewer instruments.
The track's breakdown features a long, improvised saxophone solo.
Audiences cheered when the drummer carried the breakdown alone.
Note
A musician's term for the moment a song drops away to leave space for one voice, a solo or an improvisation. A James Brown line calls for one by name. Keep it apart from the hardcore section, which gets heavier rather than thinner. Note too that banjo breakdown can mean this passage or the bluegrass tune.
- 8A section of a song, common in hardcore and related styles, marked by a lower tempo and a heavier, more intense sound.
The metalcore band saved its heaviest breakdown for the encore.
Fans moshed through every breakdown in the set.
Note
Hardcore and metal audiences use it for the slow, crushing section of a song built for moshing. The tempo drops, but the weight goes up, often through chugging, palm-muted riffs. The vocabulary around it is physical. The CMJ New Music Report in 1999 described "slamming, moshable breakdowns", and a band might save its heaviest one for the encore.
- 9In hip-hop, a percussion-focused segment of a song that a DJ manipulates through cutting and mixing to create rhythmic music.
The DJ cut between two copies of the same record to extend the breakdown.
Early hip-hop crews built whole routines around a single breakdown.
Similarbreak
Note
In hip-hop it is another name for the percussion break: the drum-heavy stretch of a record that a DJ isolates and extends by cutting and mixing between copies. It shades into the stripped-down passage, since in both the rest of the song falls away. The difference is that here the point is what the DJ does with it.
- 10The sudden, usually damaging change of an electrical insulator into a conductor under a strong enough voltage, caused by partial or complete ionization of the material.
Engineers raised the test voltage until a breakdown occurred at several thousand volts.
Excessive voltage across the capacitor caused a breakdown in its dielectric layer.
Note
Physicists and electrical engineers mean something exact: the moment an insulator stops insulating. In a capacitor or cable it is called dielectric breakdown, and the threshold has its own compound, the breakdown voltage. One word covers the process, a single event, and that threshold, so context has to show which is meant. Uncountable use names the process; a breakdown is one occurrence.
- 11In film production, a detailed analysis of an upcoming project or screenplay that lists everything it will need, including cast, costumes, equipment, props, and special effects.
The line producer's breakdown flagged every special effect the script would demand.
Casting directors work from a breakdown that summarizes each role's requirements.
Note
A production word. Before shooting starts, someone goes through the script and lists everything each scene will need. That list lets schedules and budgets be built from one shared reference. Casting directors use the word in the same way for the summary of the roles they need to fill.
- 12A noisy, rapid, shuffling dance performed competitively by individuals or pairs in succession, common among African Americans in the Southern United States, or a lively, chiefly rural gathering at which the dancing is done.
The fiddler struck up a tune and the dancers launched into a furious breakdown.
Come, hold on, boys, do n't clear out when the quadrilles are over, for we are going to have a break down to wind up with.
1859, John Russell Bartlett, “Break down”Similarhoedown
Note
A dated Southern US word, both for a competitive shuffling dance and for the party where it was danced. In John Russell Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms (1859), a break down winds up an evening once the quadrilles are over. Mark Twain's "The Californian's Tale" (1906) has miners tuning a fiddle and banjo for one. Today it reads as historical, and hoedown or shindig name the same kind of event.
- 13A piece of music played to accompany a breakdown dance, especially a rapid bluegrass tune featuring a five-string banjo.
The banjo player tore through a breakdown that left the fiddler racing to keep up.
Their set closed with a blistering breakdown in the key of G.
Similarhoedown
Note
The tune named for the shuffling dance has outlived it. In bluegrass a breakdown is a fast showpiece for five-string banjo, and "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" carries the word in its title. Writers even speak of breakdown speed, as Madison Smartt Bell does in Soldier's Joy (1989). The natural verb is play: you play a breakdown.
- 14The brief phase of open play immediately following a tackle and continuing before and through the ensuing ruck.
The flanker arrived first at the breakdown and ripped the ball free.
Slow ball from the breakdown let the defense reset its line.
Note
Rugby union commentators treat it as a place as much as a moment, so it usually takes the: a team wins, slows or dominates the breakdown. In the plural it counts individual contests, as in penalties at breakdowns. Possession is decided there. That is why BBC Sport's 2011 report on England against Georgia singled out Georgia's control of the breakdown.
- 15In a sawmill, the sawing apart of logs with a large saw, or the saw itself, or, rarely, the building where this is done.
Each breakdown reduced a massive log to a stack of squared timbers.
The mill's old breakdown could rip through a three-foot log in minutes.
Note
A sawmilling word that mostly works as a modifier in front of another noun, as in a breakdown saw for the heavy machine that makes the first cuts in a log. On its own it can name the cut, the saw or, rarely, the building. The surrounding words usually settle which one is meant.
- 16An injury to a horse's leg severe enough to cause lameness.
The thoroughbred suffered a breakdown in the final furlong and was pulled up.
Veterinarians rushed onto the track after the breakdown to assess the injured leg.
Note
Racing and veterinary language use it for a horse whose leg gives way. The damage is typically to tendon, ligament or bone, under the strain of racing or hard work. It is a grave word on a racecourse: a horse that suffers a breakdown is pulled up at once, and the vets go straight to the leg.
- 17The collapse of something, such as a building, as it breaks apart.
Witnesses reported the breakdown of the scaffold moments after the storm struck.
The breakdown of the dam left the valley awash within the hour.
Note
An obsolete literal use for a bridge, wall or other structure physically giving way. For a building or dam today, write collapse. A modern reader who meets the breakdown of the dam will expect a failure of function, as in the mechanical sense, rather than the structure coming down.
Practice
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Origin
This noun is formed from the verb phrase "break down."