to break up
152
3.4
- phrasal verb
- /breɪk ʌp/
:
dispersar
- On 2 March, the police broke up a demonstration in support of the striking mothers.
- break up a demonstration
- police break up a crowd
- break up a fight
Things got wild and we're like trying to break up a fight.
- Things got wild and we're like trying to break up a fight.
- You have functioning families now broken up by drug abuse.
- But it felt like our team had been broken up.
- But we that, that meeting kind of broke us up.
- Yeah, that one broke up the Union.
- I will not overturn the result of the referendum, nor will I break up my country.
- So now what we're going to do is we're going to break up into two groups.
- She broke up a fight between me and an Invisible Man.
Examples
-
Break it up, you two!
-
We must break them up!
-
All right, come on, break it up.
-
But I do think it is important that we break up these big tech companies.
-
And if a bank is too big to fail, we need to break it up before it breaks us.
-
The Cold Spring authorities broke up the melee before any serious incidents occurred.
Academic text (2001) -
Dietlef had paused to let the crowd break up and talk among themselves.
Fiction book (1998) -
A September demonstration protesting the pact's secret protocols was broken up by special police forces.
Academic text (1990) -
The teacher decided to break up the students into smaller groups for the project.
-
The police were called to break up the large gathering in the park to ensure safety.
Synonyms
575
2.3
End a relationship or go separate ways
481
2.9
To move apart or stop being together
137
2.7
To end a close relationship and go separate ways
110
2.7
To make people or animals move quickly in different directions
104
4.4
To cause people and things, like a crowd or fog, to spread over a wide area
81
5.3
Stop a meeting for a short time to continue later
60
4.1
To officially end an organization, agreement, or relationship
50
3.2
To stop something suddenly before it is finished, for example a talk or relationship
43
4.3
To stop being a group, for example a band or committee
26
3.0
To separate into pieces, for example a machine or a group
15
4.8
To stop a meeting, court, or session for a short time
11
6.2
To leave a group and form a smaller, separate one often after disagreement
1
7.0
To cause people or groups to separate
1
7.9
To make a group that was together become divided
Antonyms
How Final
Surface Forms
Morphology
break + up
The meaning 'to interrupt or bring a pause' is directly derivable from combining 'break' (to stop or interrupt) with the particle 'up', which commonly adds a sense of separation/completion; this verb+particle composition follows a standard and predictable English pattern. Even though 'up' lacks a dictionary entry here, its usual contribution to meaning makes the expression readily inferable by a B1 learner who knows the constituents.
Etymology
Break up comes from the idea of breaking a group apart, like a whistle or force making people run in different directions. So it means 'to cause a group or meeting to end or disperse'.