to break even
- phrasal verb
- /breɪk ˈiːvən/
- When FunAsia opened in December of 2002, the goal was to break even within a year.
- money or breaking even
- company to break even
- losing money or breaking even
So yeah, I'm hoping to just if I break even, that's awesome.
- So yeah, I'm hoping to just if I break even, that's awesome.
- How am I going to break even?
- You know, I think I, I think we broke even.
- And that was enough for us to break even.
- And even then, they're just breaking even.
- It wasn't great but to not lose any money and break even on that date was a bloody good start.
- And I hate that so much because it takes so much work just to start to break even on this business, let alone for it to pay you back, right?
- Options on volatile underlyings are more expensive and thus the underlying stock needs to move more for you to break even as an options buyer.
- I mean, I got involved in a staging company that lost money and we broke even in the end.
- I find my poor dad broke even with a PhD, exactly as Marx predicted the intellectuals would go.
- And my number one question was at what month do we break even?
- Most videos I'll probably lose money or break even, but some of them are going to just for by luck, by chance, whatever it is, just do really well.
Examples
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But let's just say they did break even on cash flow.
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After analyzing the budget, the company realized they would break even this quarter without making a profit.
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It's gonna take 50 for me to break even.
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We'll only break even if we agree to three and a half.
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In other words, you have to make two million dollars to break even?
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But most technologies are at break even or will break even shortly.
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Competitive pricing allows no means of financing the pipeline and allows each company to break even.
Academic text (1998) -
And so this is just one more reason why you guys need to understand what a business has to look at from a break even standpoint just to stay open.
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If I was going to break even (let alone turn a profit), I'd need a second printing.
Academic text (2009) -
Currently, commercial taxes in Somerville only break even, while residential taxes fail to cover the cost of core municipal services.
Academic text (2001)
Antonyms
How Profitable
Surface Forms
Morphology
The adjective 'even' clearly signals equality, so a learner who knows 'even' may infer that the phrase concerns equal amounts; however 'break' here has a non-literal, metaphorical sense meaning 'reach' or 'come to' rather than its usual sense of damaging or separating. Because the verb's role is not fully predictable from its basic meaning, the expression is only partially compositional and best classified as semi-transparent.
Etymology
Break even may come from simple money counting. One popular story says shopkeepers would break a pile of coins so both sides were even, and when the two parts matched they had 'no profit and no loss', which is why the phrase means the same today.