Verb

(hesitat)

To stop or pause respecting decision or action; to be in suspense or uncertainty as to a determination.

He hesitated''' whether to accept the offer or not; men often '''hesitate in forming a judgment.

(Alexander Pope)

To stammer; to falter in speaking.

(transitive, poetic, rare) To utter with hesitation or to intimate by a reluctant manner.

*

Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike.

Verb

To break from internal pressure.

* {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)

, chapter=6 citation , passage=‘[…] I remember a lady coming to inspect St. Mary's Home where I was brought up and seeing us all in our lovely Elizabethan uniforms we were so proud of, and bursting into tears all over us because “it was wicked to dress us like charity children”. […]’.}}

To cause to break from internal pressure.

(obsolete) To cause to break by any means.

* Shakespeare

You will not pay for the glasses you have burst ?

* Fairfax

He burst his lance against the sand below.

To separate formfeed at perforation lines.

To enter or exit hurriedly and unexpectedly.

* 1856 : (Gustave Flaubert), (Madame Bovary), Part III Chapter X, translated by Eleanor Marx-Aveling

He entered Maromme shouting for the people of the inn, burst open the door with a thrust of his shoulder, made for a sack of oats, emptied a bottle of sweet cider into the manger, and again mounted his nag, whose feet struck fire as it dashed along.

* 1913 , (Mariano Azuela), The Underdogs, translated by E. MunguÍa, Jr.

Like hungry dogs who have sniffed their meat, the mob bursts in, trampling down the women who sought to bar the entrance with their bodies.

To produce as an effect of bursting.

to burst a hole through the wall