Noun

(es)

A gap or opening made by breaking or battering, as in a wall, fortification or levee; the space between the parts of a solid body rent by violence; a break; a rupture; a fissure.

* 1599 , , Henry V , act 3, scene 1:

"Once more unto the breach , dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead."

A breaking up of amicable relations, a falling-out.

* Shakespeare

There's fallen between him and my lord / An unkind breach .

A breaking of waters, as over a vessel or a coastal defence; the waters themselves; surge; surf.

A clear breach''' is when the waves roll over the vessel without breaking. A clean '''breach is when everything on deck is swept away.

* Bible, 2 Sam. v. 20

The Lord hath broken forth upon mine enemies before me, as the breach of waters.

* 1719 , :

I cast my eye to the stranded vessel, when, the breach and froth of the sea being so big, I could hardly see it, it lay so far of; and considered, Lord! how was it possible I could get on shore.

A breaking out upon; an assault.

* Bible, 1 Chron. xiii. 11

The Lord had made a breach upon Uzza.

(archaic) A bruise; a wound.

* Bible, Leviticus xxiv. 20

breach for breach, eye for eye

(archaic) A hernia; a rupture.

(legal) A breaking or infraction of a law, or of any obligation or tie; violation; non-fulfillment; as, a breach of contract; a breach of promise.

(figurative) A difference in opinions, social class etc.

* 2013 September 28, , " London Is Special, but Not That Special," New York Times (retrieved 28 September 2013):

For London to have its own exclusive immigration policy would exacerbate the sense that immigration benefits only certain groups and disadvantages the rest. It would entrench the gap between London and the rest of the nation. And it would widen the breach between the public and the elite that has helped fuel anti-immigrant hostility.

The act of breaking, in a figurative sense.

* 1748 , David Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding , Section 3, § 12:

But were the poet to make a total difression from his subject, and introduce a new actor, nowise connected with the personages, the imagination, feeling a breach in transition, would enter coldly into the new scene;

Noun

(uncountable) The quality of being different.

(countable) A characteristic of something that makes it different from something else.

* {{quote-magazine, title=Towards the end of poverty

, date=2013-06-01, volume=407, issue=8838, page=11, magazine=(The Economist) citation , passage=But poverty’s scourge is fiercest below $1.25 (the average of the 15 poorest countries’ own poverty lines, measured in 2005 dollars and adjusted for differences in purchasing power): people below that level live lives that are poor, nasty, brutish and short.}}

(countable) A disagreement or argument.

We have our little differences , but we are firm friends.

* Shakespeare

What was the difference ? It was a contention in public.

* T. Ellwood

Away therefore went I with the constable, leaving the old warden and the young constable to compose their difference as they could.

(countable, uncountable) Significant change in or effect on a situation or state.

* 1908 , (Kenneth Grahame), (The Wind in the Willows)

The line of the horizon was clear and hard against the sky, and in one particular quarter it showed black against a silvery climbing phosphorescence that grew and grew. At last, over the rim of the waiting earth the moon lifted with slow majesty till it swung clear of the horizon and rode off, free of moorings; and once more they began to see surfaces—meadows wide-spread, and quiet gardens, and the river itself from bank to bank, all softly disclosed, all washed clean of mystery and terror, all radiant again as by day, but with a difference that was tremendous.

(countable) The result of a subtraction; sometimes the absolute value of this result.

(obsolete) Choice; preference.

* Spenser

That now be chooseth with vile difference / To be a beast, and lack intelligence.

(heraldry) An addition to a coat of arms to distinguish two people's bearings which would otherwise be the same. See augmentation and cadency.

(logic) The quality or attribute which is added to those of the genus to constitute a species; a differentia.

(logic circuits) A Boolean operation which is TRUE when the two input variables are different but is otherwise FALSE; the XOR operation ($\backslash scriptstyle\; A\; \backslash overline\; B\; +\; \backslash overline\; A\; B$).

(relational algebra) the set of elements that are in one set but not another ($\backslash scriptstyle\; A\; \backslash overline\; B$).