1. To cause to be broken (in any sense). "Your latest patch
to the editor broke the paragraph commands."
2. (Of a program) To stop temporarily, so that it may
debugged. The place where it stops is a "breakpoint".
3. To send an EIA-232 break (two character widths of line
high) over a serial line.
4. [Unix] To strike whatever key currently causes the tty
driver to send SIGINT to the current process. Normally,
break, delete or control-C does this.
5. "break break" may be said to interrupt a conversation (this
is an example of verb doubling). This usage comes from radio
communications, which in turn probably came from landline
telegraph/teleprinter usage, as badly abused in the Citizen's
Band craze a few years ago.
6. pipeline break.
7. break statement.
[Jargon File]
(2004-03-24)
Nearby terms:
BRB « bread crumbs « breadth first search « break » break-even point » breakpoint » break statement
