breakaway
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈbɹeɪkəweɪ/
Forms: form: breakaways
Etymology: From break + away, a deverbal from break away.
Senses: examples: text: 1932, Alan Lennox-Boyd, Hansard, 10 May, 1932, Finance Bill, https://web.archive.org/web/20190212095659/https://www.hansard-corpus.org/
[…] this Finance Bill represents a definite breakaway from the old practice of mass bribing, vote catching, and political Finance Bills which we were in grave danger of establishing as a permanent part of our national activities.
text: If the horse had been any good—or if he had known how to get any good out of the horse—he would have risked everything on a breakaway and a wild gallop.
ref: 1954, C. S. Lewis, chapter 11, in The Horse and His Boy, Collins, published 1998:
text: Following a breakaway of the test train near Huntingdon during final trials, the start of the London-Newcastle-Edinburgh "Roadrailer" service scheduled for August 19 was postponed.
ref: 1963 September, Modern Railways, page 146:
text: During all that time, the French-speaking province of Quebec demanded additional powers to preserve its language and unique culture, while separatist pressure, generated by the Parti Quebecois, threatened breakaway if the demands were frustrated.
ref: 1992 December 21, Michael S. Serrill, “Back On Track”, in Time:
text: […] the adoption of the veil by Muslim women in West European countries is often justified as a mark of their autonomy, a breakaway from the sexualizing influences of Western culture.
ref: 2011, Jeffrey Weeks, The Languages of Sexuality, Routledge, page 158:
glosses: The act of breaking away from something.
examples: text: The summit of the climb came 38km from the end of stage 14, which began in Limoux and ended in Foix in the foothills of the Pyrenees, and the incident occurred as the peloton emerged into the light and passed under the banner at the top, a quarter of an hour behind a five-man breakaway.
ref: 2012 July 15, Richard Williams, Tour de France 2012: Carpet tacks cannot force Bradley Wiggins off track, Guardian Unlimited:
qualifier: cycle racing
glosses: A group of riders which has gone ahead of the peloton.
examples: 2015, Eric MacKenzie, "Canucks fall 2-1 to Oilers in OT," vancouver24hrs.ca, 18 October, 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20151020145050/http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/2015/10/19/canucks-fall-2-1-to-oilers-in-ot
With the game tied 1-1 early in the third, Henrik got free on a breakaway and was stopped by Oilers goalie Anders Nilsson […]
topics: hobbies
ice-hockey
lifestyle
skating
sports
glosses: A situation in the game where one or more players of a team attack towards the goal of the other team without having any defenders in front of them.
examples: 2011, Colleen Aycock and Mark Scott (eds.), The First Black Boxing Champions: Essays on Fighters of the 1800s to the 1920s, Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Appendix: The Great Fights, George Dixon vs. Jack Skelly (September 6, 1892), p. 262,
The gong sounded almost immediately after the breakaway.
topics: boxing
government
hobbies
lifestyle
martial-arts
military
politics
sports
war
glosses: The act of getting away from one's opponent; the separation of the boxers after a spell of infighting.
glosses: A stampede of animals.
examples: 1893, The Argus, 29 April, 1893, p. 4, col. 4, cited in Edward Ellis Morris, Austral English: A Dictionary of Australasian Words, Phrases and Usages, 1898, http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks09/0900231.txt
The smartest stock horse that ever brought his rider up within whip distance of a breakaway or dodged the horns of a sulky beast, took the chance.
glosses: An animal that breaks away from a herd.
topics: geography
natural-sciences
glosses: An eroding steep slope on the edge of a plateau; an escarpment.
examples: text: He was forced to slow to a walking pace in order to negotiate a rack of deep breakaways.
ref: 2002, Alex Miller, Journey to the Stone Country, Allen & Unwin, published 2003, page 353:
glosses: A channel of floodwater that has burst from its usual course; or the track or channel eroded by the water.
examples: text: After watching some older kids try out for the New York City Parks Department's yo-yo championship, Stephen Awerman, an eleven-year-old from Jamaica, L.I., decided that he could hold his own with the big boys. He spun his yo-yo through the required figures—spinner, walking-the-dog, breakaway[…]—then unreeled 312 loop-the-loops to latch onto the title.
ref: 1958 August 5, “Scoreboard”, in Time:
glosses: A particular yo-yo trick http://yoyo.wikia.com/wiki/Breakaway.
glosses: A swing dance in which the leader occasionally swings the follower out into an open position.
examples: text: EFFECT […] This usually refers to special effects such as flash pots, torches, crashes, breakaways, etc.
ref: 1980, Robert Anderson, Theatre Talk, page 19:
topics: entertainment
lifestyle
theater
glosses: An item of scenery designed to be broken or destroyed during the performance.
Derived terms: breakaway neckline
breakaway suspenders
Related terms: escape