Word.ws English Dictionary

break stride

break stride verb: to cease walking or running at the same gait, especially with the result of interrupting one's forward momentum.

Verb

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

  1. To cease walking or running at the same gait, especially with the result of interrupting one's forward momentum.
    • Ain't nothin' gonna break my stride / Nobody gonna slow me down / Oh no, I got to keep on moving1983, Matthew Wilder, Greg Prestopino, “Break My Stride”, in I Don't Speak the Language
    • When the second goal came, it was a belter - Fabregas launching an inch-perfect ball over the top for Van Persie to volley in without breaking stride.2011 January 22, Ian Hughes, “Arsenal 3 - 0 Wigan”, in BBC

Forms of break stride

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

Questions about break stride

What does break stride mean?
Break stride means to cease walking or running at the same gait, especially with the result of interrupting one's forward momentum.
What part of speech is break stride?
Break stride is a verb.
What is the past tense of break stride?
The past tense of break stride is broke stride.

Words near break stride in the dictionary

  1. break someone's back
  2. break someone's balls
  3. break someone's face
  4. break someone's heart
  5. break squelch
  6. break stride
  7. break the back of
  8. break the bank
  9. break the buck
  10. break the cycle
  11. break the deadlock

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: break stride (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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