breaking

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of break.

   The storm left branches breaking under the weight of the ice.

   Breaking the seal on the jar released a sharp smell.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty. As a participle it describes action in progress, either with an object or without one: the ice is breaking, he is breaking the ice. As a gerund it fills a noun's slot but still takes a direct object, as in breaking the seal. By contrast, the noun for the act needs of: the breaking of the seal.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act by which something is broken or split into separate pieces.

   The breaking of the dam sent millions of gallons rushing downstream.

   A sharp breaking of the rope sent the climber sliding backward.

   Similarrupture, bursting, snapping, fracture

   Note

   The action noun takes a plural as readily as it stands alone. Breakings are separate, countable instances, not just the general act. John Renard's Tales of God's Friends (2009) speaks of "breakings of the natural order of things," meaning wonders that interrupt nature. Pair the word with of to name what breaks (the breaking of the dam), and use the plural when the instances can be counted one by one.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   An athletic street dance style built on footwork, spins, and freeze poses, performed within hip-hop culture.

   She got into breaking after watching a crew perform downtown.

   Breaking made its debut as a competitive event at the Paris Olympics.

   Similarbreakdancing

   Note

   Dancers themselves prefer this name for the style that came out of 1970s Bronx hip-hop culture; breakdancing is the label the media gave it. Karen Schupp's Studying Dance (2014) lists breaking alongside waacking and house dancing as urban dance genres. In that kind of writing the shorter word is now standard. When you write about the dance as an art or a sport, breaking is the safer choice.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   A change in which a single vowel sound shifts into a diphthong, a vowel that glides from one sound to another.

   The breaking of West Germanic vowels reshaped the sound of early English.

   Historical linguists trace the breaking of long monophthongs across many centuries.

   Similardiphthongization

   Oppositemonophthongization

   Note

   Historical linguists use the word for a split inside a single vowel. A plain vowel develops a glide and becomes a diphthong, as certain Old English vowels did before particular consonants. Nothing shatters here; the image is of one sound breaking into two parts. The term usually takes of plus the vowels affected (the breaking of front vowels) and belongs to technical writing on sound change.

5. 5
   noununcountable

   A form of musical ornamentation in which groups of short notes replace longer ones.

   The fiddler's breaking turned a plain reel into something ornate.

   Baroque players often used breaking to decorate a long held note.

   Similardivision, diminution

   Note

   A performer's term from the craft of ornamentation: a long note is broken into a run of shorter ones that fill the same time. The image matches the verb's sense of dividing something into smaller units, the way money is broken into change. Players speak of breaking a note or of the breaking in a passage. Outside a musical context, readers may take it for the ordinary act of breaking.

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