The AI-powered English dictionary
plural breakers
Something that breaks. examples
A machine for breaking rocks, or for breaking coal at the mines. examples
The building in which such a machine is placed. examples
A person who specializes in breaking things. examples
(chiefly in the plural) A wave breaking into foam against the shore, or against a sandbank, or a rock or reef near the surface, considered a useful warning to ships of an underwater hazard quotations examples
Now and then in the lagoon you hear the leaping of a fish […]. And above all, ceaseless like time, is the dull roar of the breakers on the reef.
1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter 53, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], pages 279–280
And then went down to the ship,Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea
1925, Ezra Pound, Canto I
There came a cry "Oh, there be breakers dead ahead!" / From the collier Nightingale
1979, Stan Rogers (lyrics and music), “The Flowers of Bermuda” (track 6), in Between the Breaks ... Live!, Dundas, Ontario: Fogarty's Cove Music
(colloquial) A breakdancer. examples
(US, dated) A user of CB radio. quotations examples
Their radios had been blocked by a breaker calling himself Yankee Bucket Mouth.
2015, Dave Wise, Stuart Wise, Like A Summer With A Thousand Julys
(primarily plural) Clipping of shipbreaker. examples
(electrical engineering) Ellipsis of circuit breaker. examples
A horsebreaker. quotations examples
A hasty and passionate breaker will often make a really goodtempered young horse an inveterate gibber
1831-1850, William Youatt, On the Structure and the Diseases of the Horse
"My beauty endures even as I endure; still, if thou wilt, oh rash man, have thy will; but blame not me if passion mount thy reason, as the Egyptian breakers used to mount a colt, and guide it whither thou wilt not."
1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887
(US, dated) Used to open a conversation or call for a response on CB radio. quotations examples
Breaker to the Bandit
1977, Smokey and the Bandit, spoken by Sheriff Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason)
A small cask of liquid kept permanently in a ship's boat in case of shipwreck. quotations examples
Then the conversation broke off, and there was little more talking, only a noise of men going backwards and forwards, and of putting down of kegs and the hollow gurgle of good liquor being poured from breakers into the casks.
1898, J. Meade Falkner, chapter 4, in Moonfleet, London, Toronto, Ont.: Jonathan Cape, published 1934