Breakdown vs Broken - What's the difference?
breakdown | broken |
A failure, particularly mechanical; something that has failed
A physical collapse or lapse of mental stability
Listing, division or categorization in great detail
(chemistry) Breaking of chemical bonds within a compound to produce simpler compounds or elements.
A musical technique, by where the music is stripped down, becoming simpler, and can vary in heaviness depending on the genre.
* 1992 , En Vogue, My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It) (song)
(sports) A loss of organization (of the parts of a system).
* {{quote-news
, year=2011
, date=September 18
, author=Ben Dirs
, title=Rugby World Cup 2011: England 41-10 Georgia
, work=BBC Sport
(US, dated) A noisy, rapid, shuffling dance engaged in competitively by a number of persons or pairs in succession, as among the blacks of the southern United States.
(US, dated) Any crude, noisy dance performed by shuffling the feet, usually by one person at a time.
* (rfdate) New Eng. Tales
(US) Any rapid bluegrass dance tune, especially featuring a five-string banjo.
* 1893 , (Mark Twain) "The Californian's Tale", in (1906)
*
*
* {{quote-book, ???, title=Watch You Bleed: The Saga of Guns N' Roses, page=102,
books.google.com/books?isbn=1592403778, author=Stephen Davis, year=2008, passage=Izzy lays down some big chords while Slash plays the song's banjo breakdown of a theme.}}
*
*
Fragmented, in separate pieces.
# Fractured; having the bone in pieces.
# (label) Split or ruptured.
# Dashed, made up of short lines with small gaps between each one and the next.
# (label) Interrupted; not continuous.
#* (rfdate), , White Fang :
# Five-eighths to seven-eighths obscured by clouds; incompletely covered by clouds.
Breeched; violated; not kept.
Non-functional; not functioning properly.
# Disconnected, no longer open or carrying traffic.
# Badly designed or implemented.
# Grammatically non-standard, especially as a result of being a non-native speaker.
# Not having gone in the way intended; saddening.
Completely defeated and dispirited; shattered; destroyed.
Having no money; bankrupt, broke.
(label) Uneven.
* 2005 , Will Cook, Until Darkness Disappears , page 54:
Overpowered; overly powerful; too powerful.
As a noun breakdown
is a failure, particularly mechanical; something that has failed.As a proper noun broken is
(derogatory|slang) torres strait creole.breakdown
English
Noun
(en noun)- We saw a breakdown by the side of the road.
- After so much stress, he suffered a breakdown and simply gave up.
- ''Looking at the breakdown of the budget, I see a few items we could cut.
- And now it's time for a breakdown !
citation, page= , passage=Georgia, ranked 16th in the world, dominated the breakdown before half-time and forced England into a host of infringements, but fly-half Merab Kvirikashvili missed three penalties.}}
- Don't clear out when the quadrilles are over, for we are going to have a breakdown to wind up with.
- Foggy Mountain 'Breakdown'
- Towards nine the three miners said that as they had brought their instruments they might as well tune up, for the boys and girls would soon be arriving now, and hungry for a good old fashioned breakdown . A fiddle, a banjo, and a clarinet - these were the instruments.
Synonyms
* (musical technique) degradationDerived terms
* breakdown lorry / breakdown truck * breakdown point * nervous breakdownSee also
* break it downbroken
English
Verb
(head)Adjective
(en adjective)- My arm is broken !
- the ground was littered with broken bones
- A dog bit my leg and now the skin is broken .
- Then the circle would lie down again, and here and there a wolf would resume its broken nap.
- Tomorrow: broken skies.
- broken''' promises of neutrality'', '''''broken''' vows'', ''the '''broken covenant
- I think my doorbell broken .
- This is the most broken application I've seen in a long time.
- Oh man! That is just broken !
- The bankruptcy and divorce, together with the death of his son, left him completely broken .
- (en)
- 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.