BREAK APART

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does break apart mean? 

• BREAK APART (verb)
  The verb BREAK APART has 3 senses:

1. take apart into its constituent pieces

2. break violently or noisily; smash

3. break up or separate

  Familiarity information: BREAK APART used as a verb is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BREAK APART (verb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Take apart into its constituent pieces

Classified under:

Verbs of sewing, baking, painting, performing

Synonyms:

break apart; break up; disassemble; dismantle; take apart

Hypernyms (to "break apart" is one way to...):

destroy; destruct (do away with, cause the destruction or undoing of)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "break apart"):

strike (disassemble a temporary structure, such as a tent or a theatrical set)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Sense 2

Meaning:

Break violently or noisily; smash

Classified under:

Verbs of touching, hitting, tying, digging

Synonyms:

break apart; break up; crash

Hypernyms (to "break apart" is one way to...):

disintegrate (break into parts or components or lose cohesion or unity)

Verb group:

crash (cause to crash)

Sentence frames:

Something ----s
Something is ----ing PP

Sense 3

Meaning:

Break up or separate

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Synonyms:

break apart; disunify

Context example:

Yugoslavia broke apart after 1989

Hypernyms (to "break apart" is one way to...):

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

Sentence frame:

Something ----s

 Context examples 

Their shapes change, too, as they break apart.

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

At some point, however, the Martian gravity would “break apart” the moon, researchers theorize.

(Mars May Have Had Rings, and May Once Again, VOA News)

According to the model, Phobos will break apart upon reaching the Roche limit, and become a set of rings in roughly 70 million years.

(Does Mars Have Rings? Not Right Now, But Maybe One Day, NASA)

Once a photograph was taken of the planet, astronomers then used instruments called spectrometers to break apart the planet's light.

(Water Found in Planet 120 Light Years Away, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

For a 90-meter ice cliff to collapse entirely, the ice shelves supporting the cliff would have to break apart extremely quickly, within a matter of hours — a rate of ice loss that has not been observed in the modern record.

(Antarctic ice cliffs may not contribute to ice-sheet instability as much as predicted, National Science Foundation)

In fact, Phobos, one of Mars’ two moons (Deimos is the other), is getting closer to the Red Planet, and researchers think that in about 70 million years, it will break apart, potentially creating more rings.

(Mars May Have Had Rings, and May Once Again, VOA News)

Over time, Mars' gravitational pull would have pulled that moon toward the planet until it reached the Roche limit, the distance within which a planet's tidal forces will break apart a celestial body that is held together only by gravity.

(Does Mars Have Rings? Not Right Now, But Maybe One Day, NASA)