breakdownnoun
uk/ˈbreɪk.daʊn/us/ˈbreɪk.daʊn/breakdown noun (FAILURE)
B2 [ C ] a failure to work or be successful:
I had a breakdown (= my car stopped working) in the middle of the road.
Both sides blamed each other for the breakdown of talks.
See also
break down
More examples
- The breakdown in negotiations will be seen as a step backwards.
- Some children were well brought up, despite family breakdown, he admitted.
- An immediate effect of the war was a breakdown of law and order.
- He warned that the breakdown of the family unit would lead to an impoverished society.
- the trauma of marriage breakdown
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Failures
- a dog's breakfast idiom
- another/the final nail in the coffin idiom
- car crash
- cock-up
- dead duck
- foul-up
- free fall
- hash
- lemon
- loser
- lost cause
- lulu
- mess
- mess-up
- parody
- slim pickings
- slush pile
- track record
- train wreck
- turkey
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breakdown noun (DIVISION)
C2 [ C or U ] a division of something into smaller parts:
We asked for a breakdown of the accident figures into day time and night time.
The rate of breakdown of muscle protein was assessed.
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Separating and dividing
- atomize
- bifurcate
- bifurcation
- bisect
- borderline
- branch
- disestablish
- dismember
- dissociate
- dissociate yourself from sth
- disunite
- divide
- drift
- pull sth/sb apart
- quarter
- ravel
- resolve
- resolve sth into sth
- rive
- tear 1
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breakdown noun (ILLNESS)
B2 [ C ] a nervous breakdown
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Mental & psychiatric disorders
- ad
- adjustment disorder
- age-associated memory impairment
- anhedonia
- anorexia nervosa
- eating disorder
- learning difficulties
- male menopause
- melancholia
- obsessive
- paranoia
- persecution complex
- PTSD
- sad
- schizophrenia
- schizophrenic
- seasonal affective disorder
- Sen
- Stockholm syndrome
- visual variant of Alzheimer's disease
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