Word: breakaway Part of Speech: noun Etymology: From break + away, a deverbal from break away. Pronunciation: /ˈbɹeɪkəweɪ/ 1. The act of breaking away from something. Example: 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. Example: 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. 2. A group of riders which has gone ahead of the peloton. Example: 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. 3. 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. Example: 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 […] 4. The act of getting away from one's opponent; the separation of the boxers after a spell of infighting. Example: 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. 5. A stampede of animals. Labels: Australia 6. An animal that breaks away from a herd. Labels: Australia Example: 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. 7. An eroding steep slope on the edge of a plateau; an escarpment. Labels: Australia 8. A channel of floodwater that has burst from its usual course; or the track or channel eroded by the water. Labels: Australia Example: He was forced to slow to a walking pace in order to negotiate a rack of deep breakaways. 9. A particular yo-yo trick http://yoyo.wikia.com/wiki/Breakaway. Example: 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. 10. A swing dance in which the leader occasionally swings the follower out into an open position. 11. An item of scenery designed to be broken or destroyed during the performance. Example: EFFECT […] This usually refers to special effects such as flash pots, torches, crashes, breakaways, etc.