different between breach vs misdemeanor

English

Etymology

From Middle English breche, from Old English bry?e (“fracture, breach”) and br?? (“breach, breaking, destruction”), from Proto-West Germanic *bruki, from Proto-Germanic *brukiz (“breach, fissure”) and *br?k? (“breaking”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [b?i?t?]
• Rhymes: -i?t?
• Homophone: breech

Noun

breach (plural breaches)

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

   Synonyms: break, rupture, fissure

   • 1599, William Shakespeare, Henry V, act 3, scene 1:

     "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead."
2. A breaking up of amicable relations, a falling-out.
3. A breaking of waters, as over a vessel or a coastal defence; the waters themselves

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

   Synonyms: surge, surf

4. A breaking out upon; an assault.
5. (archaic) A bruise; a wound.
6. (archaic) A hernia; a rupture.
7. (law) A breaking or infraction of a law, or of any obligation or tie; violation; non-fulfillment

   breach of promise

8. (figuratively) A difference in opinions, social class etc.
   • 2013 September 28, Kenan Malik, "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.

9. 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;

Synonyms

• break
• rift
• rupture
• gap

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

breach (third-person singular simple present breaches, present participle breaching, simple past and past participle breached)

1. (transitive) To make a breach in.

   They breached the outer wall, but not the main one.

2. (transitive) To violate or break.
   • 2000, Mobile Oil Exploration & Producing Southeast, Inc. v. United States, Justice Stevens.

     "I therefore agree with the Court that the Government did breach its contract with petitioners in failing to approve, within 30 days of its receipt, the plan of exploration petitioners submitted."

3. (transitive, nautical, of the sea) To break into a ship or into a coastal defence.
4. (intransitive, of a whale) To leap out of the water.
   • 1835, Hart, Joseph C., Miriam Coffin, or The whale-fishermen, Harper & brothers, vol. 2, page 147:

     The fearless whale-fishermen now found themselves in the midst of the monsters; ... some ... came jumping into the light of day, head uppermost, exhibiting their entire bodies in the sun, and falling on their sides into the water with the weight of a hundred tons, and thus "breaching" with a crash that the thunder of a park of artillery could scarcely equal.

   • 1837, Hamilton, Robert, The natural history of the ordinary cetacea or whales, W.H. Lizars, page 166:

     But one of its most surprising feats, as has been mentioned of the genera already described, is leaping completely out of the water, or 'breaching,' as it is called. ... it seldom breaches more than twice or thrice at a time, and in quick succession.

Translations

Anagrams

• Bacher

English

Alternative forms

• misdemeanour (UK)

Etymology

mis- +? demeanor

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?m?sd??mi?n?(?)/
• Hyphenation: mis?de?mean?or

Noun

misdemeanor (plural misdemeanors) (American spelling)

1. (law, US) A crime usually punishable upon conviction by a small fine or by a short term of imprisonment. In the USA, misdemeanants usually are incarcerated in county jail for less than one year, but felons usually are incarcerated in state or federal prison for more than one year. Crimes which are punishable by large fines or by longer imprisonment are sometimes called felonies.

Derived terms

• misdemeanant
• misdemeanorize

Synonyms

• petty crime

Translations

See also

• felony (more serious crime)