Word.ws English Dictionary

breaking loose

breaking loose is the present participle and gerund of break loose.

Meaning of break loose

Verb

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

  1. To escape; to free oneself.
    • They stayed together during three dances, went out on to the terrace, explored wherever they were permitted to explore, paid two visits to the buffet, and enjoyed themselves much in the same way as if they had been school-children surreptitiously breaking loose from an assembly of grown-ups.1909 September 9, Archibald Marshall [pseudonym; Arthur Hammond Marshall], “A Court Ball”, in The Squire’s Daughter, London: Methuen & Co. […], →OCLC, page 9

Questions about breaking loose

What is breaking loose the present participle and gerund of?
Breaking loose is the present participle and gerund of break loose.

Words near breaking loose in the dictionary

  1. breaking into
  2. breaking into a run
  3. breaking it
  4. breaking it down
  5. breaking it to
  6. breaking loose
  7. breaking luck
  8. breaking new ground
  9. breaking news
  10. breaking of the waters
  11. breaking off

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: breaking loose (page history and authors); break loose (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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