Breakdown
['breɪkdaʊn] or ['brek'daʊn]
Definition
(noun.) an analysis into mutually exclusive categories.
(noun.) a cessation of normal operation; 'there was a power breakdown'.
(noun.) a mental or physical breakdown.
Typist: Phil--From WordNet
Definition
(n.) The act or result of breaking down, as of a carriage; downfall.
(n.) A noisy, rapid, shuffling dance engaged in competitively by a number of persons or pairs in succession, as among the colored people of the Southern United States, and so called, perhaps, because the exercise is continued until most of those who take part in it break down.
(n.) Any rude, noisy dance performed by shuffling the feet, usually by one person at a time.
Typist: Manfred
Examples
- It's a breakdown blow, and it damages Lydgate as much as Bulstrode. George Eliot. Middlemarch.
- The schools of the Roman world had been altogether swept away in the general social breakdown. H. G. Wells. The Outline of History_Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind.
- After four or five years, in spite of repeated domestic afflicti ons and the breakdown of his own health, he arrived at a successful conclusion. Walter Libby. An Introduction to the History of Science.
- Not only this, but each car becomes an independently moving unit, not subject to delay by reason of a general breakdown of the power plant or of the line. Frank Lewis Dyer. Edison, His Life and Inventions.
- The station equipment at Brockton consisted at first of three dynamos, one of which was so arranged as to supply both sides of the system during light loads by a breakdown switch connection. Frank Lewis Dyer. Edison, His Life and Inventions.
- There must first be some breakdown and necessity for direction that lets theory into her own. H. G. Wells. The Outline of History_Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind.
- His chance came when there was a breakdown of the lines between New York and Albany. Rupert S. Holland. Historic Inventions.
- And while we have had to tell of something like a complete social collapse in the west, there were no such equivalent breakdowns in the east. H. G. Wells. The Outline of History_Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind.
Typed by Brian