breaker
9
9.3
- noun
- /ˈbreɪkər/
- Archaic
- As a breaker, he had to use special tools to carefully remove blocks of stone from the rock face.
- stone breaker
Examples
-
I am Ajax, breaker of stones!
-
At dawn they took him from his cell and walked him down to the stone breaker's yard and stood him before a wall.
-
Socrates grabbed the skinny arms with his big hands—the rock breakers, as Joe Benz used to call them.
Fiction book (1998) -
The breaker skillfully split the large boulders into manageable pieces.
-
Every morning, the breaker arrived at the quarry to start working on the stone.
Synonyms
1
6.7
A person who smashes large hard rocks by hand for building or road work
A man who splits stone blocks from a ledge in a quarry
Compounds
- Specialized
17
3.9
A device that automatically stops electric current to prevent overloads
- Archaic
1
8.8
A small metal part in older car engines that opens and closes to send electricity to the spark plugs
- Specialized
A way in software to stop contacting a failing service to prevent more failures
How Fine
- US
1
7.2
- Specialized
1
7.7
- Specialized
37
2.5
15
3.0
- Specialized
12
3.9
- Archaic
9
9.3
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
Breaker comes from the simple verb break, which means 'to separate or split', plus the ending -er that shows 'a person who' or 'something that' does the action. So a breaker was originally a person who breaks rock into blocks, which is why it names a quarry worker who splits stone.