Breakers

How to spell breakers

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce breakers

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does breakers mean?

1. nounLarge waves that break into white foam as they reach shallow water or the shore.
2. nounSwitches that automatically interrupt an electrical circuit when the current becomes unsafe.

Breakers in a sentence

• The surfers paddled out beyond the line of breakers.

• The electrician labelled each of the breakers in the fuse box.

• Heavy breakers pounded the harbour wall during the storm.

• A power surge tripped two of the breakers at once.

Where does breakers come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is the plural of breaker, which is built on the verb break, descended from the Old English brecan, meaning literally 'to shatter, burst, or divide by force'. That verb traces back through the Germanic family to an ancient root meaning 'to break', a relative of the Latin frangere 'to break' that gives us 'fracture' and 'fragment'. The agent suffix -er, added to verbs to name a person or thing that performs the action, turned break into breaker, originally just 'one who breaks'. From there English developed several concrete uses: a large incoming wave that breaks into foam against the shore (recorded from the 1600s among sailors), and later a switch that breaks an electrical circuit. The spelling keeps the ea of break, an old vowel pattern that no longer matches the long 'ay' sound it carries, which is the main thing to remember.

How the word is built

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