rupture
/ˈɹʌpt͡ʃɚ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.28 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A failure mode in which a tough ductile material pulls apart rather than cracking.
Countable; Uncountable
verb
To burst, break through, or split, as under pressure.
Example Sentences
- "Hatch from the egg, that soon, / Bursting with kindly rupture, forth disclosed / Their callow young."
- "Thus a war was kindled with Lubec; Denmark took part with the king's enemies, and made use of a frivolous pretence, which demonstrated the inclination of his Danish majesty to come to a rupture."
- "He knew that policy would disincline Napoleon from a rupture with his family."
- "Our age of what Mark Carney called global rupture is also often described as following the “law of the jungle”, in which the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must, with international law shattered and multilateral organisations hollowed out."
- "The cracking sound, he explained, as far as I, a non-plumber, could understand, was the sound of the overworked, undermaintained and weirdly installed heating unit’s core rupturing and spilling water into the basement."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *Hrew-? Proto-Indo-European *Hrewp- Proto-Indo-European *-né- Proto-Indo-European *Hrunépti Latin rumpō Latin ruptūrader. Middle French rupturebor. ▲ Latin ruptūrabor. English rupture Borrowed from Middle French rupture, or its source, Latin ruptūra (“a breaking, rupture (of a limb or vein)”) and Medieval Latin ruptūra (“a road, a field, a form of feudal tenure, a tax, etc.”), from the participle stem of rumpere (“to break, burst”). Doublet of roture.
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
- Root: ruptūra
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈɹʌpt͡ʃɚ/
- British English: /ˈɹʌpt͡ʃəː/