breaker

CEFRB1

/ˈbɹeɪkə/

noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

01
noun
A person or thing that breaks something; a wave that breaks.
02
noun
Extra detail
A machine for breaking rocks, or for breaking coal at the mines.

Examples

At a glance

Sits at B1 on the CEFR scale

Deep Dive

Extra meanings

The building in which such a machine is placed.
Something that breaks (something else).
A wave breaking into foam against the shore, or against a sandbank, or a rock or reef near the surface, considered a useful warning to ships of an underwater hazard

In context

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Question 1 · Quick check

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The word in print, with each source given in full.

My beauty endures even as I endure; still, if thou wilt, oh rash man, have thy will; but blame not me if passion mount thy reason, as the Egyptian breakers used to mount a colt, and guide it whither thou wilt not.
1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC
Now and then in the lagoon you hear the leaping of a fish[…]. And above all, ceaseless like time, is the dull roar of the breakers on the reef.
1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter 53, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC, pages 279–280
Then the conversation broke off, and there was little more talking, only a noise of men going backwards and forwards, and of putting down of kegs and the hollow gurgle of good liquor being poured from breakers into the casks.
[1898], J[ohn] Meade Falkner, Moonfleet, London; Toronto, Ont.: Jonathan Cape, published 1934, →OCLC
And then went down to the ship, Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea
1925, Ezra Pound, Canto I
There came a cry "Oh, there be breakers dead ahead!" / From the collier Nightingale
1979, Stan Rogers, “The Flowers of Bermuda” (track 6), in Between the Breaks ... Live!, Dundas, Ontario: Fogarty's Cove Music

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From Middle English breker, brekere, equivalent to break + -er. Cognate with Dutch breker, German Low German Breker, German Brecher.