different between force vs break

English

Pronunciation

• (General American) enPR: fôrs, IPA^(key): /f??s/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /f??s/
• (rhotic, without the horse–hoarse merger) enPR: f?rs, IPA^(key): /fo(?)?s/
• (non-rhotic, without the horse–hoarse merger) IPA^(key): /fo?s/
• Rhymes: -??(?)s

Etymology 1

From Middle English force, fors, forse, from Old French force, from Late Latin or Vulgar Latin *fortia, from neuter plural of Latin fortis (“strong”).

Noun

force (countable and uncountable, plural forces)

1. Strength or energy of body or mind; active power; vigour; might; capacity of exercising an influence or producing an effect.
2. Power exerted against will or consent; compulsory power; violence; coercion.
   • 1591, William Shakespeare, Henry VI, part II

     which now they hold by force, and not by right

3. (countable) Anything that is able to make a substantial change in a person or thing.
4. (countable, physics) A physical quantity that denotes ability to push, pull, twist or accelerate a body and which has a direction and is measured in a unit dimensioned in mass × distance/time² (ML/T²): SI: newton (N); CGS: dyne (dyn)
5. Something or anything that has the power to produce a physical effect upon something else, such as causing it to move or change shape.
6. (countable) A group that aims to attack, control, or constrain.
   • 1611, William Shakespeare, Cymbeline

     Is Lucius general of the forces?

   • "A fine man, that Dunwody, yonder," commented the young captain, as they parted, and as he turned to his prisoner. "We'll see him on in Washington some day. He is strengthening his forces now against Mr. Benton out there. […]."
8. (uncountable) The ability to attack, control, or constrain.

9. (countable) A magic trick in which the outcome is known to the magician beforehand, especially one involving the apparent free choice of a card by another person.
10. (law) Legal validity.

11. (law) Either unlawful violence, as in a "forced entry", or lawful compulsion.
12. (linguistics, semantics, pragmatics) Ability of an utterance or its element (word, form, prosody, ...) to effect a given meaning.
13. (humorous or science fiction, with the, often capitalized) A metaphysical and ubiquitous power from the fictional Star Wars universe created by George Lucas. See usage note. [1977]
14. Synonym of police force (“typically with preceding "the"”)

Usage notes

• Adjectives often applied to "force": military, cultural, economic, gravitational, electric, magnetic, strong, weak, positive, negative, attractive, repulsive, good, evil, dark, physical, muscular, spiritual, intellectual, mental, emotional, rotational, tremendous, huge.
• (science fiction): Outside of fiction, the force may be used as an alternative to invoking luck, destiny, or God. For example, the force was with him instead of luck was on his side, or may the force be with you instead of may God be with you.

Hyponyms

Derived terms

• may the Force be with you
• workforce

Related terms

Translations

References

• force on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Etymology 2

From Middle English forcen, from Old French forcer, from Late Latin *forti?re, from Latin fortia.

Verb

force (third-person singular simple present forces, present participle forcing, simple past and past participle forced)

1. (transitive) To violate (a woman); to rape. [from 14^thc.]
2. (obsolete, reflexive, intransitive) To exert oneself, to do one's utmost. [from 14^thc.]

   • And I pray you for my sake to force yourselff there, that men may speke you worshyp.

3. (transitive) To compel (someone or something) to do something. [from 15^thc.]

   • Captain Edward Carlisle […] felt a curious sensation of helplessness seize upon him as he met her steady gaze, […]; he could not tell what this prisoner might do. He cursed the fate which had assigned such a duty, cursed especially that fate which forced a gallant soldier to meet so superb a woman as this under handicap so hard.

   • 2011, Tim Webb & Fiona Harvey, The Guardian, 23 March:

     Housebuilders had warned that the higher costs involved would have forced them to build fewer homes and priced many homebuyers out of the market.

4. (transitive) To constrain by force; to overcome the limitations or resistance of. [from 16^thc.]
5. (transitive) To drive (something) by force, to propel (generally + prepositional phrase or adverb). [from 16^thc.]

   • It stuck so fast, so deeply buried lay / That scarce the victor forced the steel away.

   • Ethelbert […] ordered that none should be forced into religion.

   • 2007, The Guardian, 4 November:

     In a groundbreaking move, the Pentagon is compensating servicemen seriously hurt when an American tank convoy forced them off the road.

6. (transitive) To cause to occur (despite inertia, resistance etc.); to produce through force. [from 16^thc.]
   • 2009, "All things to Althingi", The Economist, 23 July:

     The second problem is the economy, the shocking state of which has forced the decision to apply to the EU.

7. (transitive) To forcibly open (a door, lock etc.). [from 17^thc.]

8. To obtain or win by strength; to take by violence or struggle; specifically, to capture by assault; to storm, as a fortress.
9. (transitive, baseball) To create an out by touching a base in advance of a runner who has no base to return to while in possession of a ball which has already touched the ground.

10. (whist) To compel (an adversary or partner) to trump a trick by leading a suit that he/she does not hold.
11. (archaic) To put in force; to cause to be executed; to make binding; to enforce.
    • c. 1613, John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi

      What can the church force more?

12. (archaic) To provide with forces; to reinforce; to strengthen by soldiers; to man; to garrison.
13. (obsolete) To allow the force of; to value; to care for.

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• Imperial unit: foot pound
• metric unit: newton
• coerce: To control by force.

Etymology 3

From Middle English force, forz, fors, from Old Norse fors (“waterfall”), from Proto-Germanic *fursaz (“waterfall”). Cognate with Icelandic foss (“waterfall”), Norwegian foss (“waterfall”), Swedish fors (“waterfall”). Doublet of foss.

Noun

force (plural forces)

1. (countable, Northern England) A waterfall or cascade.
   • 1778, Thomas West, A Guide to the Lakes in Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire

     to see the falls or force of the river Kent

Derived terms

• forcefall

Translations

Etymology 4

From Middle English forcen, forsen, a use of force, with confusion of farce (“to stuff”).

Verb

force (third-person singular simple present forces, present participle forcing, simple past and past participle forced)

1. To stuff; to lard; to farce.

Derived terms

• forcemeat

Further reading

• force at OneLook Dictionary Search
• force in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• force in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Anagrams

• Cofer, Corfe, corfe

French

Etymology

From Middle French force, from Old French force, from Late Latin or Vulgar Latin *fortia, re-analyzed as a feminine singular from the neuter plural of Latin fortis. Compare Catalan força, Portuguese força, Italian forza, Spanish fuerza.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /f??s/
• Rhymes: -??s
• Homophones: forcent, forces

Noun

force f (plural forces)

1. force
2. strength

Synonyms

• pouvoir
• puissance
• violence

Derived terms

Adjective

force (invariable)

1. (archaic) Many; a lot of; a great quantity of.

Verb

force

1. first/third-person singular present indicative of forcer
2. first/third-person singular present subjunctive of forcer
3. second-person singular imperative of forcer

Further reading

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

Middle French

Etymology

From Old French force.

Noun

force f (plural forces)

1. force (physical effort; physical might)

Descendants

• French: force

Old French

Alternative forms

• forche (Picardy, Old Northern French)
• fors

Etymology

From Late Latin or Vulgar Latin *fortia, re-analyzed as a feminine singular from the neuter plural of Latin fortis.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?f?r.t?s?/

Noun

force f (oblique plural forces, nominative singular force, nominative plural forces)

1. strength; might

Related terms

• esforcer
• esfort
• fort
• forteresce

Descendants

• Middle French: force
  • French: force
• Walloon: foice
• ? Middle English: force / fors / forse
  • English: force

Portuguese

Verb

force

1. first-person singular (eu) present subjunctive of forçar
2. third-person singular (ele and ela, also used with você and others) present subjunctive of forçar
3. third-person singular (você) affirmative imperative of forçar
4. third-person singular (você) negative imperative of forçar

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