# breaker
## English
### Etymology 1

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

#### Pronunciation

* (UK) IPA: /ˈbɹeɪkə/
* Audio (Southern England):(file)
* (US) enPR: brāʹkər, IPA: /ˈbɹeɪkɚ/
* Rhymes: -eɪkə(ɹ)

#### Noun

breaker (plural breakers)
* Something that breaks (something else).
    Synonyms: destroyer, wrecker
    a breaker of men's souls
* A machine for breaking rocks, or for breaking coal at the mines.
    Coordinate terms: crusher, dresser
* The building in which such a machine is placed.
    at the coal breaker
    A: Is John at the tipple? B: No, he's at the breaker today.
* (often plural) A person or company that specializes in breaking things; their yard.
    Synonyms: (often synonymous) scrapper, wrecker, knacker; (their yard) breaker's yard, more at wreck yard
** (primarily plural) Ellipsis of shipbreaker; a shipbreaking company or its yard.
** (primarily plural) Ellipsis of car breaker; a car breaking company or its yard.
** Ellipsis of horsebreaker.
*** 1831-1850, William Youatt, On the Structure and the Diseases of the Horse:
    A hasty and passionate breaker will often make a really goodtempered young horse an inveterate gibber
*** 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC: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.
* (chiefly in the plural) 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
** 1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter 53, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC, pages 279–280: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.
** 1925, Ezra Pound, Canto I:And then went down to the ship, Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea
** 1979, Stan Rogers (lyrics and music), “The Flowers of Bermuda” (track 6), in Between the Breaks ... Live!, Dundas, Ontario: Fogarty's Cove Music:There came a cry "Oh, there be breakers dead ahead!" / From the collier Nightingale
* (colloquial) A breakdancer.
    Synonyms: B-boy (masculine), B-girl (feminine)
* (US, dated) A user of CB radio.
** 2015, Dave Wise, Stuart Wise, Like A Summer With A Thousand Julys:Their radios had been blocked by a breaker calling himself Yankee Bucket Mouth.
* (electrical engineering) Ellipsis of circuit breaker.
    breaker panel

##### Derived terms

* backbreaker
* ball-breaker
* bead breaker
* bitch breaker
* bladebreaker
* breaker bar
* breaker boy
* breaker-inner
* breakerless
* breaker's yard
* breaker-up
* brick breaker
* circuit breaker
* circuit-breaker
* codebreaker
* combo breaker
* deal breaker
* faithbreaker
* gaolbreaker
* groundbreaker
* heartbreaker
* heart breaker
* homebreaker
* horsebreaker
* horse-breaker
* house-breaker
* house breaker
* housebreaker
* ice breaker
* ice-breaker
* icebreaker
* jailbreaker
* jaw-breaker
* jawbreaker
* lawbreaker
* law-breaker
* leg breaker
* leg-breaker
* matchbreaker
* middlebreaker
* nutbreaker
* oathbreaker
* pathbreaker
* peacebreaker
* rulebreaker
* Sabbath-breaker
* safebreaker
* shipbreaker
* shopbreaker
* slave breaker
* stonebreaker
* strawbreaker
* strikebreaker
* sword-breaker
* tie-breaker
* tie breaker
* tiebreaker
* trailbreaker
* trucebreaker
* visbreaker
* water breaker
* water-breaker
* wedbreak
* windbreaker
* wind breaker
* window-breaker

##### Translations
#### Interjection

breaker
* (US, dated) Used to open a conversation or call for a response on CB radio.
    breaker one nine
** 1977, Smokey and the Bandit, spoken by Sheriff Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason):Breaker to the Bandit

#### See also

* spring breaker

### Etymology 2

Probably from Spanish barrica (“barrel”). Doublet of barrique.

#### Noun

breaker (plural breakers)
* A small cask of liquid kept permanently in a ship’s boat in case of shipwreck.
** [1898], J[ohn] Meade Falkner, Moonfleet, London; Toronto, Ont.: Jonathan Cape, published 1934, →OCLC: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.

### Anagrams

* rebreak

## French
### Etymology 1
#### Pronunciation

* IPA: /bʁɛ.kœʁ/ ~ /bʁe.kœʁ/

#### Noun

breaker m (plural breakers)
* circuit breaker
    Synonym: disjoncteur

### Etymology 2
#### Pronunciation

* IPA: /bʁɛ.ke/ ~ /bʁe.ke/

#### Verb

breaker
* (tennis) to break (win a game when receiving)

##### Derived terms

* débreaker

## Spanish
### Pronunciation

* IPA: /ˈbɾeikeɾ/ [ˈbɾei̯.keɾ]
* Rhymes: -eikeɾ
* Syllabification: brea‧ker

### Noun

breaker m (uncountable)
* breaker; circuit breaker