Word.ws English Dictionary

breakaway

/ˈbɹeɪkəweɪ/

breakaway adjective: having broken away from a larger unit.

Adjective

breakaway (not comparable)

  1. Having broken away from a larger unit.
    • The breakaway republic is slowly establishing order and civil society.
    • Nor is it true, although it has been suggested as true, that I am in favour of breakaway or splinter unions1946, William Brown, Hansard, 19 November, 1946, Trade Unions Closed Shop, https://web.archive.org/web/20190212095659/https://www.hansard-corpus.org/
  2. Capable of breaking off without damaging the larger structure.
    • a breakaway wall
    • In Hollywood, rehearsing for his show, Red Skelton plunged headlong into a "breakaway" door. It didn't break, and Red was hospitalized with concussion and a mild case of shock.1954 August 30, “The Week in Review”, in Time
  3. Occurring during or as a result of a breakaway (see Noun)
    • In a league starved for scoring, the challenge ensures that some super-sweet breakaway goals will be overturned because a dude was three microns offside.2016, Scott Feschuk, "Counting down the most annoying in video review, by sport," sportsnet.ca, 10 July, 2016, http://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/counting-annoying-video-review-sport/
  4. Enjoying rapid popular success.
    • The New York quintet call themselves Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band, and their RCA debut LP is this season's breakaway disco act.1976 November 1, “Sass and Class”, in Time
    • In that season, NBC added another first-year breakaway hit, Friends.1996 November 14, Bill Carter, “So Many New Shows, but Not One Hit”, in The New York Times

Noun

breakaway (plural breakaways)

  1. The act of breaking away from something.
    • […] this Finance Bill represents a definite breakaway from the old practice of mass bribing, vote catching, and political Finance Bills which we were in grave danger of establishing as a permanent part of our national activities.1932, Alan Lennox-Boyd, Hansard, 10 May, 1932, Finance Bill, https://web.archive.org/web/20190212095659/https://www.hansard-corpus.org/
    • If the horse had been any good—or if he had known how to get any good out of the horse—he would have risked everything on a breakaway and a wild gallop.1954, C. S. Lewis, chapter 11, in The Horse and His Boy, Collins, published 1998
  2. (cycle racing) A group of riders which has gone ahead of the peloton.
    • The summit of the climb came 38km from the end of stage 14, which began in Limoux and ended in Foix in the foothills of the Pyrenees, and the incident occurred as the peloton emerged into the light and passed under the banner at the top, a quarter of an hour behind a five-man breakaway.2012 July 15, Richard Williams, Tour de France 2012: Carpet tacks cannot force Bradley Wiggins off track, Guardian Unlimited
  3. A situation in the game where one or more players of a team attack towards the goal of the other team without having any defenders in front of them.
    • With the game tied 1-1 early in the third, Henrik got free on a breakaway and was stopped by Oilers goalie Anders Nilsson […]2015, Eric MacKenzie, "Canucks fall 2-1 to Oilers in OT," vancouver24hrs.ca, 18 October, 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20151020145050/http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/2015/10/19/canucks-fall-2-1-to-oiler...
  4. The act of getting away from one's opponent; the separation of the boxers after a spell of infighting.
    • The gong sounded almost immediately after the breakaway.2011, Colleen Aycock and Mark Scott (eds.), The First Black Boxing Champions: Essays on Fighters of the 1800s to the 1920s, Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Appendix: The Great Fights, George Dixon...
  5. (Australia) A stampede of animals.
  6. (Australia) An animal that breaks away from a herd.
    • The smartest stock horse that ever brought his rider up within whip distance of a breakaway or dodged the horns of a sulky beast, took the chance.1893, The Argus, 29 April, 1893, p. 4, col. 4, cited in Edward Ellis Morris, Austral English: A Dictionary of Australasian Words, Phrases and Usages, 1898, http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks09/0900231.txt
  7. (Australia) An eroding steep slope on the edge of a plateau; an escarpment.
  8. (Australia) A channel of floodwater that has burst from its usual course; or the track or channel eroded by the water.
    • He was forced to slow to a walking pace in order to negotiate a rack of deep breakaways.2002, Alex Miller, Journey to the Stone Country, Allen & Unwin, published 2003, page 353
  9. A particular yo-yo trick http://yoyo.wikia.com/wiki/Breakaway.
    • After watching some older kids try out for the New York City Parks Department's yo-yo championship, Stephen Awerman, an eleven-year-old from Jamaica, L.I., decided that he could hold his own with the big boys. He spun his yo-yo through the required figures—spinner, walking-the-dog...1958 August 5, “Scoreboard”, in Time
  10. A swing dance in which the leader occasionally swings the follower out into an open position.
  11. An item of scenery designed to be broken or destroyed during the performance.
    • EFFECT […] This usually refers to special effects such as flash pots, torches, crashes, breakaways, etc.1980, Robert Anderson, Theatre Talk, page 19

breakaway meaning in Malayalam and Kannada

breakaway in Malayalam

separatist, secessionist, schismatic
ഭിന്നിച്ചുമാറിയ, വിയോഗി, വിയുക്ത, വേർപെട്ട, വേർതിരിഞ്ഞ, വിഖണ്ഡിത

breakaway in Kannada

ಬೇರೆಯಾದ, ವಿಚ್ಛಿನ್ನ, ವಿಚ್ಛೇದನ ಪಡೆಯುವ

Examples of breakaway in a sentence

  • As Actaeon turned, Melanchaetes / The ringleader of this breakaway trio / Grabbed a rear ankle / In the trap of his jaws.1997, Ted Hughes, “Actaeon”, in Tales from Ovid, London: Faber & Faber, page 111, lines 144–147:
  • […] the Sunday Times said some 20 MPs are ready to form a breakaway party if Mrs Leadsom is elected as leader over Home Secretary Theresa May […]2016 July 10, “Iain Duncan Smith claims 'black ops' bid to 'denigrate' Leadsom”, in BBC News:
  • The breakaway party espouses land expropriation without compensation and sweeping state nationalism, including nationalizing the Reserve Bank.2024 June 5, Sarah Dean and David McKenzie, “Jacob Zuma has made a dramatic comeback in South Africa’s elections. Will he have the last...
  • Following a breakaway of the test train near Huntingdon during final trials, the start of the London-Newcastle-Edinburgh "Roadrailer" service scheduled for August 19 was postponed.1963 September, Modern Railways, page 146:

All 15 example sentences with breakaway

Forms of breakaway

pluralbreakaways

Origin of breakaway

From break + away, a deverbal from break away.

Words formed from breakaway

Phrases with breakaway

Questions about breakaway

What does breakaway mean?
Breakaway means having broken away from a larger unit.
What is breakaway in Malayalam?
Breakaway in Malayalam is ഭിന്നിച്ചുമാറിയ, വിയോഗി, വിയുക്ത. See Breakaway meaning in Malayalam.
How do you use breakaway in a sentence?
As Actaeon turned, Melanchaetes / The ringleader of this breakaway trio / Grabbed a rear ankle / In the trap of his jaws.
What part of speech is breakaway?
Breakaway can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce breakaway?
Breakaway is pronounced /ˈbɹeɪkəweɪ/.

Words near breakaway in the dictionary

  1. breakableness
  2. breakables
  3. breakably
  4. breakage
  5. breakages
  6. breakaway
  7. Breakaway Creek
  8. breakaway glass
  9. breakaways
  10. breakback
  11. breakbeat

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: breakaway (page history and authors); breakaway (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); breakaway (Kannada Wiktionary) (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-breakaway.wav, EN-AU ck1 breakaway.ogg.

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