Word.ws English Dictionary

break character

break character verb: to fail to act as a certain character; to be or act out of character.

Verb

break character (third-person singular simple present breaks character, present participle breaking character, simple past broke character, past participle broken character)

  1. (intransitive) To fail to act as a certain character; to be or act out of character.
    • Once Lynne and I realized that Jim was going to approach the role of Kaufman in a “method acting,” Kaufmanesque kind of way—i.e., he would become Andy or Tony Clifton for the entire shoot, never breaking character […]2014, Bob Zmuda, Lynne Margulies, Andy Kaufman: The Truth, Finally, BenBella Books, →ISBN, page 43

Forms of break character

third-person singular presentbreaks character
present participlebreaking character
pastbroke character
past participlebroken character

Questions about break character

What does break character mean?
Break character means to fail to act as a certain character; to be or act out of character.
What part of speech is break character?
Break character is a verb.
What is the past tense of break character?
The past tense of break character is broke character.

Words near break character in the dictionary

  1. break back
  2. break bad
  3. break bread
  4. break bulk
  5. break camp
  6. break character
  7. break clause
  8. break clauses
  9. break containment
  10. break cover
  11. break dance

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: break character (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “break character.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/break_character. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.