Breaker

How to spell breaker

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce breaker

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does breaker mean?

1. nounA switch that automatically interrupts an electrical circuit when the current becomes too high.
2. nounA large ocean wave that collapses into white foam as it reaches the shore.
3. nounA person or thing that breaks something.

Breaker in a sentence

• The toaster and kettle together tripped the breaker in the kitchen.

• A huge breaker crashed over the rocks and soaked the watching tourists.

• The company hired her as a code breaker during the war.

• He reset the breaker in the fuse box after the power cut.

• The surfers waited beyond the line where each breaker began to curl.

• The old machine was sold to a scrap breaker for parts.

Where does breaker come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built directly on the verb 'break', which comes from the Old English brecan, meaning 'to shatter, divide, or violate'. That verb traces back to a Germanic root shared with Dutch breken and German brechen, and ultimately to an even older Indo-European root meaning 'to break or burst'. The agent suffix '-er', also native to Old English, was added to form a noun meaning 'a person or thing that breaks', a pattern English uses freely (baker, maker, runner). Over the centuries the noun gathered specialist meanings: sailors used it for a heavy wave that 'breaks' into foam against the shore, and electricians later adopted it for the switching device that 'breaks' an electrical circuit. The spelling trap is purely the vowel: the long 'ay' sound is written 'ea', not 'ai' or 'ee', a quirk inherited straight from the parent verb 'break'.

How the word is built

• break (Old English brecan: to break)
• -er (agent/instrument suffix)