BREAKUP

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does breakup mean? 

• BREAKUP (noun)
  The noun BREAKUP has 2 senses:

1. the termination or disintegration of a relationship (between persons or nations)

2. coming apart

  Familiarity information: BREAKUP used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BREAKUP (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The termination or disintegration of a relationship (between persons or nations)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

breakup; dissolution

Hypernyms ("breakup" is a kind of...):

conclusion; ending; termination (the act of ending something)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "breakup"):

splitsville (separation or breakup or divorce)

annulment; invalidation ((law) a formal termination (of a relationship or a judicial proceeding etc))

Derivation:

break up (discontinue an association or relation; go different ways)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Coming apart

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural events

Synonyms:

breakup; detachment; separation

Hypernyms ("breakup" is a kind of...):

alteration; change; modification (an event that occurs when something passes from one state or phase to another)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "breakup"):

breach; break; falling out; rift; rupture; severance (a personal or social separation (as between opposing factions))

break (the occurrence of breaking)

Derivation:

break up (come apart)

break up (discontinue an association or relation; go different ways)

 Context examples 

Therapeutically inactive ingredient of pharmaceutical dosage form used to protect it against premature physical breakup and to prevent unwanted environmental interactions.

(Coating Excipient, NCI Thesaurus)

Divorce is the legal breakup of a marriage.

(Divorce, NIH)

The team determined that lithium insertion caused an asymmetry in the spacing between vanadium atoms, known as Peierls distortion, which was responsible for the breakup of the VS2 flakes.

(Creating Better Lithium-Ion Batteries Made Possible with New Discovery, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

Comet 332P was 150 million miles from the sun, slightly beyond the orbit of Mars, when Hubble spotted the breakup.

(Hubble Takes Close-up Look at Disintegrating Comet, NASA)

In the past decade, satellites observed a rapid terminus retreat and the breakup of the ice tongue in 2010.

(Retreat of Yakutat Glacier, NASA)

If you often have to wait for your money, you will change the entire system, for Uranus will be in hard angle to Saturn, which always means the breakup of the old and the introduction of a new program or structure.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

Banwell and co-author Professor Doug MacAyeal from the University of Chicago had previously suggested that the filling and draining of hundreds of lakes might have led to the catastrophic breakup of the Larsen B Ice Shelf 2002 when 3,250 square kilometres of ice was lost in just a few days.

(Surface lakes cause Antarctic ice shelves to ‘flex’, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

Sometimes the eighth house rules loss of some sort, such as a financial or material matter, or the loss of someone you enjoyed in your life (could be a breakup or something else) or loss of a pet if your furry creature ran away.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

The results demonstrate a link between surface melting and the weakening of Antarctic ice shelves and support the idea that recent ice shelf breakup around the Antarctic Peninsula may have been triggered, at least in part, by large amounts of surface meltwater produced in response to atmospheric warming.

(Surface lakes cause Antarctic ice shelves to ‘flex’, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)