Heartbroken

How to spell heartbroken

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce heartbroken

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does heartbroken mean?

1. adjectiveOverwhelmed by grief or deep emotional pain, especially after loss or disappointment.

Heartbroken in a sentence

• She was heartbroken when her application was rejected after months of waiting.

• The whole team felt heartbroken after losing the final in the last minute.

Where does heartbroken come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound, joining 'heart' and 'broken', and it reflects a very old way of locating deep emotion in the chest. The word 'heart' descends from Old English 'heorte', a native Germanic word that named both the physical organ and the seat of feeling, courage, and memory, which is why we still speak of learning something 'by heart'. The second element comes from Old English 'brecan', meaning to shatter or destroy, the same root that gives us 'break' and 'breach'. The image of grief literally fracturing the heart is ancient, appearing in the Bible and in medieval writing long before the compound itself settled. By the time 'heartbroken' was current in the 1500s, it had become a fixed adjective for someone crushed by sorrow, and because both halves are everyday words, the spelling holds few surprises beyond remembering it is written as one solid word.

How the word is built

• heart (the organ, seat of emotion)
• broken (past participle of break: shattered)