different between break vs hole

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: br?k, IPA^(key): /b?e?k/, [b??e??k]
• Rhymes: -e?k
• Homophone: brake

Etymology 1

From Middle English breken, from Old English brecan (“to break”), from Proto-West Germanic *brekan, from Proto-Germanic *brekan? (“to break”), from Proto-Indo-European *b?reg- (“to break”). The word is a doublet of bray.

Verb

break (third-person singular simple present breaks, present participle breaking, simple past broke or (archaic) brake, past participle broken or (colloquial) broke)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To separate into two or more pieces, to fracture or crack, by a process that cannot easily be reversed for reassembly.
   1. (transitive, intransitive) To crack or fracture (bone) under a physical strain.

2. (transitive) To divide (something, often money) into smaller units.

3. (transitive) To cause (a person or animal) to lose spirit or will; to crush the spirits of.
   • 1613, William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, Henry VIII, Act IV, Sc. 2:

     An old man, broken with the storms of state,

     Is come to lay his weary bones among ye;

     Give him a little earth for charity

   1. To turn an animal into a beast of burden.
      • 2002, John Fusco, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

        Colonel: See, gentlemen? Any horse could be broken.

4. (intransitive) To be crushed, or overwhelmed with sorrow or grief.

5. (transitive) To interrupt; to destroy the continuity of; to dissolve or terminate.
   1. (transitive, theater) To end the run of (a play).
      • 1958, Walter Macqueen-Pope, St. James's: Theatre of Distinction (page 134)

        In July Alexander broke the run and went on tour, as was his custom. He believed in keeping in touch with provincial audiences and how wise he was!

      • 1986, Kurt Gänzl, The British Musical Theatre: 1865-1914 (page 610)

        After Camberwell he broke the play's season and brought it back in the autumn with a few revisions and a noticeably strengthened cast but without any special success.

6. (transitive) To ruin financially.

   • With arts like these rich Matho, when he speaks, / Attracts all fees, and little lawyers breaks.

7. (transitive) To violate, to not adhere to.
8. (intransitive, of a fever) To pass the most dangerous part of the illness; to go down, in terms of temperature.

   Susan's fever broke at about 3 AM, and the doctor said the worst was over.

9. (intransitive, of a spell of settled weather) To end.

10. (intransitive, of a storm) To begin; to end.

11. (intransitive, of morning, dawn, day etc.) To arrive.
12. (transitive, gaming slang) To render (a game) unchallenging by altering its rules or exploiting loopholes or weaknesses in them in a way that gives a player an unfair advantage.

13. (transitive, intransitive) To stop, or to cause to stop, functioning properly or altogether.
    1. (specifically, in programming) To cause (some feature of a program or piece of software) to stop functioning properly; to cause a regression.

14. (transitive) To cause (a barrier) to no longer bar.
    1. (specifically) To cause the shell of (an egg) to crack, so that the inside (yolk) is accessible.
    2. (specifically) To open (a safe) without using the correct key, combination, or the like.
15. (transitive) To destroy the arrangement of; to throw into disorder; to pierce.

16. (intransitive, of a wave of water) To collapse into surf, after arriving in shallow water.
17. (intransitive) To burst forth; to make its way; to come into view.
    • 1800, William Wordsworth, The Fountain

      And from the turf a fountain broke, / And gurgled at our feet.

18. (intransitive) To interrupt or cease one's work or occupation temporarily.

19. (transitive) To interrupt (a fall) by inserting something so that the falling object does not (immediately) hit something else beneath.

20. (transitive, ergative) To disclose or make known an item of news, etc.

21. (intransitive, of a sound) To become audible suddenly.
    • c. 1843,, George Lippard, The Battle-Day of Germantown, reprinted in Washington and His Generals "1776", page 45 [2]:

      Like the crash of thunderbolts[...], the sound of musquetry broke over the lawn, [...].

22. (transitive) To change a steady state abruptly.

23. (copulative, informal) To suddenly become.

24. (intransitive) Of a male voice, to become deeper at puberty.
25. (intransitive) Of a voice, to alter in type due to emotion or strain: in men generally to go up, in women sometimes to go down; to crack.

26. (transitive) To surpass or do better than (a specific number), to do better than (a record), setting a new record.

27. (sports and games):
    1. (transitive, tennis) To win a game (against one's opponent) as receiver.
    2. (intransitive, billiards, snooker, pool) To make the first shot; to scatter the balls from the initial neat arrangement.

    3. (transitive, backgammon) To remove one of the two men on (a point).
28. (transitive, military, most often in the passive tense) To demote, to reduce the military rank of.
    • 1953 February 9, “Books: First Rulers of Asia”, in Time:

      And he played no favorites: when his son-in-law sacked a city he had been told to spare, Genghis broke him to private.

    • 1968, William Manchester, The Arms of Krupp, Back Bay (2003), ?ISBN, page 215:

      One morning after the budget had failed to balance Finanzminister von Scholz picked up Der Reichsanzeiger and found he had been broken to sergeant.

    • 2006, Peter Collier, Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty, Second Edition, Artisan Books, ?ISBN, page 42:

      Not long after this event, Clausen became involved in another disciplinary situation and was broken to private—the only one to win the Medal of Honor in Vietnam.

29. (transitive) To end (a connection), to disconnect.

30. (intransitive, of an emulsion) To demulsify.
31. (intransitive, sports) To counter-attack
32. (transitive, obsolete) To lay open, as a purpose; to disclose, divulge, or communicate.
33. (intransitive) To become weakened in constitution or faculties; to lose health or strength.
    • 1731, Jonathan Swift, Verses on His Own Death

      See how the dean begins to break; / Poor gentleman he droops apace.

34. (intransitive, obsolete) To fail in business; to become bankrupt.
    • 1625, Francis Bacon, Of Riches

      He that puts all upon adventures doth oftentimes break, and come to poverty.

35. (transitive) To destroy the strength, firmness, or consistency of.

36. (transitive) To destroy the official character and standing of; to cashier; to dismiss.
    • January 11, 1711, Jonathan Swift, The Examiner No. 24

      when I see a great officer broke.

37. (intransitive) To make an abrupt or sudden change; to change the gait.

38. (intransitive, archaic) To fall out; to terminate friendship.
    • c. 1700 Jeremy Collier, On Friendship

      To break upon the score of danger or expense is to be mean and narrow-spirited.

39. (computing) To terminate the execution of a program before normal completion.
40. (programming) To suspend the execution of a program during debugging so that the state of the program can be investigated.

Conjugation

Quotations

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:break.

Synonyms

• (ergative: separate into two or more pieces): burst, bust, shatter, shear, smash, split
• (ergative: crack (bone)): crack, fracture
• (transitive: turn an animal into a beast of burden): break in, subject, tame
• (transitive: do that which is forbidden by): contravene, go against, violate
• (intransitive: stop functioning): break down, bust, fail, go down (of a computer or computer network)

Antonyms

• (transitive: cause to end up in two or more pieces): assemble, fix, join, mend, put together, repair
• (tennis, intransitive: break serve): hold

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Coordinate terms

• bork
• breaking
• broke
• broken

Translations

Noun

break (plural breaks)

1. An instance of breaking something into two or more pieces.

2. A physical space that opens up in something or between two things.

3. A rest or pause, usually from work.

4. (Britain) a time for students to talk or play.
5. A short holiday.

6. A temporary split with a romantic partner.

7. An interval or intermission between two parts of a performance, for example a theatre show, broadcast, or sports game.
8. A significant change in circumstance, attitude, perception, or focus of attention.

9. The beginning (of the morning).

10. An act of escaping.

11. (computing) The separation between lines, paragraphs or pages of a written text.
    • 2001, Nan Barber, ?David Reynolds, Office 2001 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual (page 138)

      No matter how much text you add above the break, the text after the break will always appear at the top of a new page.

12. (computing) A keystroke or other signal that causes a program to terminate or suspend execution.
13. (programming) Short for breakpoint.
14. (Britain, weather) A change, particularly the end of a spell of persistent good or bad weather.
15. (sports and games):
    2. (tennis) A game won by the receiving player(s).
    3. (billiards, snooker, pool) The first shot in a game of billiards
    4. (snooker) The number of points scored by one player in one visit to the table
    5. (soccer) The counter-attack
    6. (surfing) A place where waves break (that is, where waves pitch or spill forward creating white water).

16. (dated) A large four-wheeled carriage, having a straight body and calash top, with the driver's seat in front and the footman's behind.
17. (equitation) A sharp bit or snaffle.
    • 1576, George Gascoigne, The Steele Glas

      Pampered jades […] which need nor break nor bit.

18. (music) A short section of music, often between verses, in which some performers stop while others continue.

19. (music) The point in the musical scale at which a woodwind instrument is designed to overblow, that is, to move from its lower to its upper register.

20. (geography, chiefly in the plural) An area along a river that features steep banks, bluffs, or gorges (e.g., Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, US).
21. (obsolete, slang) error [late 19th–early 20th c.]

Usage notes

• music The instruments that are named are the ones that carry on playing, for example a fiddle break implies that the fiddle is the most prominent instrument playing during the break.

Synonyms

• (instance of breaking something into two pieces): split
• (physical space that opens up in something or between two things): breach, gap, space; see also Thesaurus:interspace or Thesaurus:hole
• (rest or pause, usually from work): time-out; see also Thesaurus:pause
• (time for playing outside): playtime (UK), recess (US)
• (short holiday): day off, time off; see also Thesaurus:vacation
• (beginning of the morning): crack of dawn; see also Thesaurus:dawn
• (error): See Thesaurus:error

Derived terms

Translations

Etymology 2

Clipping of breakdown (the percussion break of songs chosen by a DJ for use in hip-hop music) and see also breakdancing.

Noun

break (plural breaks)

1. (music) A section of extended repetition of the percussion break to a song, created by a hip-hop DJ as rhythmic dance music.

Derived terms

• Amen break

References

• break at OneLook Dictionary Search
• 2001. The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music: North America. Garland Publishing. Ellen Koskoff (Ed.). Pgs. 694-695.

Anagrams

• Abrek, Baker, Brake, baker, barke, brake

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /b??k/

Etymology 1

Borrowed from English break.

Noun

break m (plural breaks)

1. break (pause, holiday)

   Synonym: pause

2. (tennis) break (of serve)

Derived terms

• balle de break

Etymology 2

From earlier break de chasse, from English shooting brake.

Noun

break m (plural breaks)

1. (automotive) estate car, station wagon

   Antonym: berline

References

• “break” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Italian

Etymology

Borrowed from English break.

Noun

break m (invariable)

1. break (intermission or brief suspension of activity)

Interjection

break

1. break! (boxing)

Spanish

Noun

break m (plural breaks)

1. break (pause)
2. (tennis) break

English

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /h??l/, [h???], [h???]
• Rhymes: -??l
• (US) IPA^(key): /ho?l/, [ho??]
• Rhymes: -o?l
• Homophone: whole (depends on accent)

Etymology 1

From Middle English hole, hol, from Old English hol (“orifice, hollow place, cavity”), from Proto-West Germanic *hol, from Proto-Germanic *hul? (“hollow space, cavity”) noun derivative of Proto-Germanic *hulaz (“hollow”).

Noun

hole (plural holes)

1. A hollow place or cavity; an excavation; a pit; an opening in or through a solid body, a fabric, etc.; a perforation; a rent; a fissure.

   • The priest took a chest, and bored a hole in the lid.

   • 1840, Alfred Tennyson, Godiva:

     […] her palfrey’s footfall shot
     Light horrors thro’ her pulses: the blind walls
     Were full of chinks and holes; and overhead
     Fantastic gables, crowding, stared: […]
   1. An opening in a solid.

2. (heading) In games.
   1. (golf) A subsurface standard-size hole, also called cup, hitting the ball into which is the object of play. Each hole, of which there are usually eighteen as the standard on a full course, is located on a prepared surface, called the green, of a particular type grass.
   2. (golf) The part of a game in which a player attempts to hit the ball into one of the holes.

   3. (baseball) The rear portion of the defensive team between the shortstop and the third baseman.

   4. (chess) A square on the board, with some positional significance, that a player does not, and cannot in future, control with a friendly pawn.
   5. (stud poker) A card (also called a hole card) dealt face down thus unknown to all but its holder; the status in which such a card is.
   6. In the game of fives, part of the floor of the court between the step and the pepperbox.
3. (archaeology, slang) An excavation pit or trench.
4. (figuratively) A weakness; a flaw or ambiguity.
   • 2011, Fun - We Are Young

     But between the drinks and subtle things / The holes in my apologies, you know / I’m trying hard to take it back

5. (informal) A container or receptacle.

6. (physics) In semiconductors, a lack of an electron in an occupied band behaving like a positively charged particle.
7. (computing) A security vulnerability in software which can be taken advantage of by an exploit.
8. (slang, anatomy) An orifice, in particular the anus. When used with shut it always refers to the mouth.

9. (Ireland, Scotland, particularly in the phrase "get one's hole") Sex, or a sex partner.

   Are you going out to get your hole tonight?

10. (informal, with "the") Solitary confinement, a high-security prison cell often used as punishment.

    Synonym: box

    • 2011, Ahmariah Jackson, IAtomic Seven, Locked Up but Not Locked Down

      Disciplinary actions can range from a mere write up to serious time in the hole.

11. (slang) An undesirable place to live or visit; a hovel.

12. (figuratively) Difficulty, in particular, debt.

13. (graph theory) A chordless cycle in a graph.
14. (slang, rail transport) A passing loop; a siding provided for trains traveling in opposite directions on a single-track line to pass each other.

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:hole
• (solitary confinement): administrative segregation, ad-seg, block (UK), box, cooler (UK), hotbox, lockdown, pound, SCU, security housing unit, SHU, special handling unit

Derived terms

Descendants

• ? Japanese: ??? (h?ru)
• Sranan Tongo: olo

Translations

Verb

hole (third-person singular simple present holes, present participle holing, simple past and past participle holed)

1. (transitive) To make holes in (an object or surface).

2. (transitive, by extension) To destroy.

3. (intransitive) To go into a hole.
4. (transitive) To drive into a hole, as an animal, or a billiard ball or golf ball.
   • 1799, Sporting Magazine (volume 13, page 49)

     If the player holes the red ball, he scores three, and upon holing his adversary's ball, he gains two; and thus it frequently happens, that seven are got upon a single stroke, by caramboling and holing both balls.

5. (transitive) To cut, dig, or bore a hole or holes in.

   to hole a post for the insertion of rails or bars

Derived terms

• holeable
• holer
• hole out
• hole up

Translations

Etymology 2

Adjective

hole (comparative holer or more hole, superlative holest or most hole)

1. Obsolete form of whole.
   • 1843, Sir George Webbe Dasent (translator), A grammar of the Icelandic or Old Norse tongue (originally by Rasmus Christian Rask)

     Such was the arrangement of the alphabet over the hole North.

Anagrams

• Hoel, OHLE, helo, ohel, oleh

Czech

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [??ol?]

Noun

hole

1. inflection of h?l:
   1. genitive singular
   2. nominative/accusative/vocative plural

Verb

hole

1. masculine singular present transgressive of holit

German

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?ho?l?/

Verb

hole

1. inflection of holen:
   1. first-person singular present
   2. first/third-person singular subjunctive I
   3. singular imperative

Hausa

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?hó?.lè?/

Verb

h?l? (grade 4)

1. to relax, to enjoy oneself

Middle English

Etymology 1

From Old English h?l

Adjective

hole

1. healthy
2. safe
3. whole, complete, full

Alternative forms

• hol, ol, ole, hoal, hoale, hoel, hoil, hoille, holle, wholle
• hal, hale, halle (Northern)

References

• “h?l(e, adj.(2).”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

Adverb

hole

1. wholly

Alternative forms

• hol

References

• “h?l(e, adv.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

Noun

hole (plural holes)

1. whole, entirety
2. health
3. remedy, cure

Alternative forms

• hol

References

• “h?l(e, n.(3).”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

Descendants

• English: whole
• Scots: hole, holl

Etymology 2

From Old English hol

Noun

hole (plural holes or holen)

1. hole

Alternative forms

• hol, ol, ole, holle, hoil, houl, hul

Descendants

• English: hole
• Scots: hole

References

• “h??l(e, n.(2).”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

Etymology 3

From Old English hulu; see hull for more.

Noun

hole (plural holes)

1. hull (outer covering of a fruit or seed)
2. hut, shelter
3. hull (of a ship)

Alternative forms

• hol, holle, hul, hule, ule, hulle, ulle, hoile, huole

Descendants

• English: hull
• Scots: huil

References

• “hol(e, n.(1).”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

Etymology 4

Verb

hole

1. past participle of helen (“to cover”)

   Synonym: heled

Alternative forms

• holn

Etymology 5

Adjective

hole

1. Alternative form of hol (“hollow”)

Etymology 6

Noun

hole (uncountable)

1. Alternative form of oile (“oil”)

Etymology 7

Noun

hole (plural holen)

1. Alternative form of oule (“owl”)

Etymology 8

Adjective

hole

1. Alternative form of holy (“holy”)

Norwegian Bokmål

Etymology

From Old Norse hola

Noun

hole f or m (definite singular hola or holen, indefinite plural holer, definite plural holene)

1. alternative form of hule

References

• “hole” in The Bokmål Dictionary.

Norwegian Nynorsk

Alternative forms

• hòle

Etymology

From Old Norse hola

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /²ho?l?/

Noun

hole f (definite singular hola, indefinite plural holer, definite plural holene)

1. a cave
2. a cavity (anatomy)
3. a den

Derived terms

• augehole

References

• “hole” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.

Pennsylvania German

Etymology

From Middle High German holen, from Old High German holon, from Proto-Germanic *hul?n? (“to fetch”). Compare German holen, Dutch halen. Related to English haul.

Verb

hole

1. to fetch

Slovak

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [??ole]

Noun

hole f

1. genitive singular of ho?a

Sotho

Noun

hole 17 (uncountable)

1. far away