Word.ws English Dictionary

broken

UK/ˈbɹəʊ.kn̩//ˈbɹoʊ.kɪn/

broken is the past participle of break.

Adjective

broken (comparative more broken, superlative most broken)

  1. Fragmented; in separate pieces.
    • One recent morning the team had to replace a broken weather research station.
    • Local people say there were Russian and Chechen forces here.[…]Over here on the wall, one interesting detail- a single word, which someone has written in broken English: "Sori".2022 September 15, 2:33 from the start, in President Zelensky visits frontline as Ukraine reclaims more territory - BBC News, BBC News, archived from the original on 15 Sep 2022
    1. Fractured; having the bone in pieces.
      • My arm is broken!
      • The ground was littered with broken bones.
    2. Split or ruptured.
      • A dog bit my leg and now the skin is broken.
    3. Dashed; made up of short lines with small gaps between each one and the next.
    4. Interrupted; not continuous.
      • Then the circle would lie down again, and here and there a wolf would resume its broken nap.1906 May–October, Jack London, White Fang, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., published October 1906, →OCLC
    5. Five-eighths to seven-eighths obscured by clouds; incompletely covered by clouds.
      • Tomorrow: broken skies.
    6. Having periods of silence scattered throughout; not regularly continuous.
      • A cuckoo sat on a gate-post singing his broken June tune[.]1906, Rudyard Kipling, Puck of Pook's Hill, London: Penguin Books, published 1994, page 9
  2. (etc) Breached; violated; not kept.
    • broken promises of neutrality
    • broken vows
    Synonyms:
    violated
  3. Non-functional; not functioning properly.
    • I think my doorbell is broken.
    1. Disconnected, no longer open or carrying traffic.
    2. (informal) Badly designed or implemented.
      • This is the most broken application I've seen in a long time.
    3. Grammatically non-standard, especially as a result of being produced by a non-native speaker.
      • His conversation was in French with Mailey and Roxton, who both spoke the language well, but he had to fall back upon broken English with Malone, who could only utter still more broken French in reply.1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019
      • Don't say it in Russian / Don't say it in German / Say it in broken English1979, “Broken English”, performed by Marianne Faithfull
    4. (US, colloquial) Not having gone in the way intended; saddening.
      • Oh man! That is just broken!
  4. Completely defeated and dispirited; shattered; destroyed.
    • The bankruptcy and divorce, together with the death of his son, left him completely broken.
    • He said, "Son, when you grow up / Would you be the savior of the broken / The beaten, and the damned?"2006, “Welcome to the Black Parade”, in The Black Parade, performed by My Chemical Romance
  5. Having no money; bankrupt, broke.
  6. Uneven.
    • All that day they rode into broken land. The prairie with its grass and rolling hills was behind them, and they entered a sparse, dry, rocky country, full of draws and short cañons and ominous buttresses.2005, Will Cook, Until Darkness Disappears, page 54
  7. Overpowered; overly powerful; giving a player too much power.
    • This item is incredibly broken. I win almost every run I get to use it.
    Synonyms:
    OP, unbalanced

Meaning of break

Verb

break (third-person singular simple present breaks, present participle breaking, simple past broke or (archaic) brake, past participle broken or (nonstandard) broke)

  1. (ergative, intransitive, transitive) To separate into two or more pieces, to fracture or crack, by a process that cannot easily be reversed for reassembly.
    • If the vase falls to the floor, it might break.
    1. (ergative, intransitive, transitive) To crack or fracture (bone) under a physical strain.
      • His ribs broke under the weight of the rocks piled on his chest.
    2. (ergative, intransitive, transitive) To make the first shot; to scatter the balls from the initial neat arrangement.
      • Is it your or my turn to break?
    3. (ergative, figuratively, intransitive, transitive) To divide (something, often money) into smaller units.
      • Can you break a hundred-dollar bill for me?
    4. (ergative, figuratively, intransitive, transitive) To use a high-value denomination of currency, thus necessitating being given change in smaller denominations.
      • I don't want to break my hundred dollar bill.
    5. (ergative, intransitive, transitive) To change the orderliness or compactness of an arrangement.
      • The soldier broke formation.

See all 103 meanings of break

Proper noun capitalized: Broken

Broken

  1. (derogatory, slang) Torres Strait Creole.

Synonyms of broken

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

Forms of broken

comparativemore broken
superlativemost broken

Origin of broken

From Middle English broken, from Old English brocen, ġebrocen, from Proto-Germanic *brukanaz, past participle of Proto-Germanic *brekaną (“to break”). Cognate with Dutch gebroken (“broken”), German Low German broken (“broken”), German gebrochen (“broken”). Morphologically broke + -n.

Words formed from broken

Phrases with broken

117 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with broken

Questions about broken

What does broken mean?
Broken means fragmented; in separate pieces.
What is broken the past participle of?
Broken is the past participle of break.
What part of speech is broken?
Broken can be an adjective or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce broken?
Broken is pronounced /ˈbɹəʊ.kn̩/ (UK).

Words near broken in the dictionary

  1. brokefish
  2. brokefished
  3. brokefishes
  4. brokefishing
  5. Brokelona
  6. broken
  7. broken a butterfly on a wheel
  8. broken a butterfly on the wheel
  9. broken a butterfly upon a wheel
  10. broken a butterfly upon the wheel
  11. broken a fly on a wheel

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: broken (page history and authors); Broken (page history and authors); break (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: en-us-broken.ogg, En-au-Broken.ogg.

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