breakdowns
- 1Plural of breakdown.
Frequent equipment breakdowns forced the factory to halt production for a week.
The report listed cost breakdowns for each department side by side.
Note
A regular -s plural that always counts separate things. Where breakdown names a process, such as chemical bonds splitting, an insulator suddenly conducting, or costs being itemized, the plural can only mean individual instances: repeated breakdowns of a cable's insulation. Mechanical failures, vehicles that have failed, and a film crew's scene-by-scene breakdowns are countable already, so they pluralize without that shift.
breakdowns is a form of breakdown
breakdown, noun: A failure, especially a mechanical one that stops a machine or vehicle from working. Full entry
- Forms
- breakdownbreakdowns plural
- Spelling
- breakdown → breakdowns: add -s
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /z/.
Use it in a sentence
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