Breach

How to spell breach

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce breach

What does breach mean?

1. nounA breaking or violation of a law, agreement, duty, or standard of conduct.
2. nounA physical gap or opening made by breaking through a barrier such as a wall or dam.
3. verbTo break through, force open, or violate something such as a wall, defence, or agreement.

Breach in a sentence

• noun

  The supplier was sued for breach of contract after missing every deadline.

• noun

  Floodwater poured through the breach in the riverbank.

• verb

  Hackers managed to breach the bank's firewall overnight.

• noun

  Sharing the client list with a rival was a serious breach of trust.

• noun

  Engineers rushed to seal the breach in the sea wall before high tide.

• verb

  The protesters tried to breach the barriers around the building.

Where does breach come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Breach descends from the Old English word bryce, meaning 'a breaking' or 'a fracture', which was closely tied to the verb brecan, 'to break'. The spelling and vowel were reshaped in Middle English under the influence of Old French breche, 'a gap' or 'an opening', a word that itself traced back to the same Germanic root for breaking. From the literal idea of a physical gap smashed into a wall or fortification, the meaning extended naturally to the breaking of a promise, a law, or an agreement. The same brecan family gives us the everyday verb 'break', which is the surest memory hook: a breach is fundamentally a break. The trap in spelling is its homophone 'breech', the rear or lower part of something, so the rule to hold onto is that breach (a break, with the 'a' of break) is about violation and gaps.

How the word is built

• breach (from Old English bryce: a breaking)