Word.ws English Dictionary

break new ground

break new ground verb: to begin excavating and levelling earth for a new building, or, originally, for cultivation.

Verb

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

  1. (literally) To begin excavating and levelling earth for a new building, or, originally, for cultivation.
  2. (broadly) To initiate a new venture, especially something never before attempted; to advance or innovate.
    • One of the Birmingham R.C.W. diesel multiple-units on the Calder Valley service broke new ground on August 12 when it was enployed for a works excursion from Halifax to Windermere, [...].1962 October, “Motive Power Miscellany: London Midland Region: Central Lines”, in Modern Railways, page 280
    • Some of these things were possible to do with earlier A.I. models. But OpenAI has broken new ground, too. According to the company, GPT-4 is more capable and accurate than the original ChatGPT, and it performs astonishingly well on a variety of tests […]2023 March 15, Kevin Roose, “GPT-4 Is Exciting and Scary”, in The New York Times

Forms of break new ground

third-person singular presentbreaks new ground
present participlebreaking new ground
pastbroke new ground
past participlebroken new ground

Questions about break new ground

What does break new ground mean?
Break new ground means to begin excavating and levelling earth for a new building, or, originally, for cultivation.
What part of speech is break new ground?
Break new ground is a verb.
What is the past tense of break new ground?
The past tense of break new ground is broke new ground.

Words near break new ground in the dictionary

  1. break junctions
  2. break loose
  3. break luck
  4. break movie
  5. break movies
  6. break new ground
  7. break no squares
  8. Break O'Day
  9. break of dawn
  10. break of day
  11. break of gauge

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: break new ground (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.

Last updated:

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