Word.ws English Dictionary

break it to

break it to verb: to deliver unfortunate or upsetting news to someone.

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To deliver unfortunate or upsetting news to someone.
    • Look, I hate to break it to you, but Tim doesn't want anything to do with you anymore.
    • Although I don't doubt that he'd have put much more faith in a local wizard if one had been available, he let us take the boy into the hospital tent and do what we could for him. It wasn't much, and I told my assistant to break it to poor old Calico that he must be prepared for the worst.1923, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], “(please specify the page)”, in The Eyes of Max Carrados, London: Grant Richards, →OCLC

Forms of break it to

third-person singular presentbreaks it to
present participlebreaking it to
pastbroke it to
past participlebroken it to
alternative formbreak it
alternative formbreak the news

Questions about break it to

What does break it to mean?
Break it to means to deliver unfortunate or upsetting news to someone.
What part of speech is break it to?
Break it to is a verb.
What is the past tense of break it to?
The past tense of break it to is broke it to.

Words near break it to in the dictionary

  1. break in
  2. break into
  3. break into a run
  4. break it
  5. break it down
  6. break it to
  7. break junction
  8. break junctions
  9. break loose
  10. break luck
  11. break movie

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: break it to (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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