Fracture

How to spell fracture

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce fracture

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fracture mean?

1. nounA break or crack, especially in a bone or other hard material.
2. verbTo break or crack something, or to cause it to break.

Fracture in a sentence

• noun

  The x-ray revealed a hairline fracture in her wrist.

• verb

  A heavy fall on ice can fracture a hip in older adults.

• noun

  A slow leak appeared where the pipe developed a fracture.

• verb

  Repeated stress will eventually fracture the metal beam.

Where does fracture come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin fractura, meaning 'a breach' or 'a breaking', which was built on the verb frangere, 'to break', and its past participle fractus, 'broken'. It entered English in the late fifteenth century, arriving by way of Old French, and was first used in the medical sense of a broken bone. The same fractus root quietly fuels a whole family of English words: a 'fraction' is a piece broken off a whole, something 'fragile' is liable to break, a 'fragment' is a broken-off bit, and to 'refract' light is to break its path. The unstressed -ture ending, pronounced like 'cher', is the main spelling trap, since the t is doing the work that the ear hears as ch.

How the word is built

• fract- (from Latin frangere/fractus: to break)
• -ure (noun/verb suffix)