BREAKER

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does breaker mean? 

• BREAKER (noun)
  The noun BREAKER has 3 senses:

1. a quarry worker who splits off blocks of stone

2. waves breaking on the shore

3. a device that trips like a switch and opens the circuit when overloaded

  Familiarity information: BREAKER used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BREAKER (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A quarry worker who splits off blocks of stone

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

breaker; ledgeman

Hypernyms ("breaker" is a kind of...):

quarrier; quarryman (a man who works in a quarry)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "breaker"):

stone breaker (someone who breaks up stone)

Derivation:

break (destroy the integrity of; usually by force; cause to separate into pieces or fragments)

break (break a piece from a whole)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Waves breaking on the shore

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural events

Synonyms:

breaker; breakers; surf

Hypernyms ("breaker" is a kind of...):

moving ridge; wave (one of a series of ridges that moves across the surface of a liquid (especially across a large body of water))

Derivation:

break (curl over and fall apart in surf or foam, of waves)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A device that trips like a switch and opens the circuit when overloaded

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

breaker; circuit breaker

Hypernyms ("breaker" is a kind of...):

electrical fuse; fuse; safety fuse (an electrical device that can interrupt the flow of electrical current when it is overloaded)

Derivation:

break (interrupt the flow of current in)

 Context examples 

You are sure it was not a house-breaker’s jimmy?

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

In that case our friend the image-breaker has begun operations in another quarter of London.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Next, in the line of breakers he made out a small canoe, an outrigger canoe.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Floating on with closed eyes and muffled ears, you neither see the rocks bristling not far off in the bed of the flood, nor hear the breakers boil at their base.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Some hours passed thus; but by degrees, as the sun declined towards the horizon, the wind died away into a gentle breeze and the sea became free from breakers.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

But the supply of food and the nine breakers of water enabled the boat to stand up to the sea and wind, and I held on as long as I dared.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

The scheme had an air of adventure that inspired me, and the thought of the water breaker beside the fore companion doubled my growing courage.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Over swung the great boom, and the cog trembled and quivered within five spear-lengths of the breakers.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Using marine seismic technology deployed from an ice breaker, researchers were able to reconstruct how glaciers on the Sabrina Coast have advanced and retreated over the past 50 million years.

(Massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet has history of instability, National Science Foundatio)

Then come the sudden swirl round of the wind, the blistering gale from the south-west, the dragging anchor, the lee shore, and the last battle in the creaming breakers.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)