Unbroken

How to spell unbroken

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce unbroken

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does unbroken mean?

1. adjectiveNot broken; remaining whole, intact, or continuous without interruption.

Unbroken in a sentence

• Every plate arrived unbroken despite the rough delivery.

• She kept an unbroken run of attendance for the whole year.

Where does unbroken come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a thoroughly native English word, built from pieces that all descend from Old English. The core is the verb brecan, meaning 'to break, shatter, or violate', which goes back to a common Germanic root shared with the Dutch breken and the German brechen. The past participle of brecan was brocen, the ancestor of modern 'broken', and adding the negative prefix un-, also Old English and meaning simply 'not', produced the sense 'not broken'. The word has carried steadily through the centuries with little change beyond ordinary spelling modernisation, which is why it remains so transparent today. Because every part is plain English rather than a borrowed Latin or French element, the spelling holds no hidden surprises: it is just un plus broken.

How the word is built

• un- (not)
• brok (from the verb break)
• -en (past participle suffix)