"break free" meaning in English

See break free in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Forms: breaks free [present, singular, third-person], breaking free [participle, present], broke free [past], broken free [participle, past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|break<,,broke,broken> free}} break free (third-person singular simple present breaks free, present participle breaking free, simple past broke free, past participle broken free)
  1. To liberate oneself; to free oneself; to become free (from or of something or someone). Related terms: emancipate
    Sense id: en-break_free-en-verb-UF72nM-8 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Download JSON data for break free meaning in English (2.0kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "breaks free",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "breaking free",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "broke free",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "broken free",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "break<,,broke,broken> free"
      },
      "expansion": "break free (third-person singular simple present breaks free, present participle breaking free, simple past broke free, past participle broken free)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "During the storm, the boat broke free from its moorings.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "text": "To address the climate crisis, we need to break free of our addiction to fossil fuels.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "text": "1721, Aaron Hill, The Fatal Extravagance, London: T. Jauncy, [Scene 1], p. 9,\n[…] I saw his Lady,\nWild, with a Storm of Grief! Her Hair dishevel’d!\nAnd her loose Robes, blown, careless, by the Wind!\nStruggling, with weeping Servants, to break free."
        },
        {
          "ref": "1968, Desmond Bagley, The Vivero Letter, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Chapter 8, section 7, p. 189",
          "text": "[…] the chopper slowed and wheeled around the treetop. It was one of the big ones whose crown had broken free of the rest to spread luxuriantly in the upper air […]",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012 April 9, Mandeep Sanghera, “Tottenham 1 - 2 Norwich”, in BBC Sport",
          "text": "Tottenham left-back Benoit Assou-Ekotto broke free after a clever one-two with Emmanuel Adebayor, only to see his shot brilliantly saved by the Norwich keeper.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To liberate oneself; to free oneself; to become free (from or of something or someone)."
      ],
      "id": "en-break_free-en-verb-UF72nM-8",
      "links": [
        [
          "liberate",
          "liberate"
        ],
        [
          "free",
          "free"
        ]
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "emancipate"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "break free"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "breaks free",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "breaking free",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "broke free",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "broken free",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "break<,,broke,broken> free"
      },
      "expansion": "break free (third-person singular simple present breaks free, present participle breaking free, simple past broke free, past participle broken free)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "emancipate"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "English verbs",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "During the storm, the boat broke free from its moorings.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "text": "To address the climate crisis, we need to break free of our addiction to fossil fuels.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "text": "1721, Aaron Hill, The Fatal Extravagance, London: T. Jauncy, [Scene 1], p. 9,\n[…] I saw his Lady,\nWild, with a Storm of Grief! Her Hair dishevel’d!\nAnd her loose Robes, blown, careless, by the Wind!\nStruggling, with weeping Servants, to break free."
        },
        {
          "ref": "1968, Desmond Bagley, The Vivero Letter, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Chapter 8, section 7, p. 189",
          "text": "[…] the chopper slowed and wheeled around the treetop. It was one of the big ones whose crown had broken free of the rest to spread luxuriantly in the upper air […]",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012 April 9, Mandeep Sanghera, “Tottenham 1 - 2 Norwich”, in BBC Sport",
          "text": "Tottenham left-back Benoit Assou-Ekotto broke free after a clever one-two with Emmanuel Adebayor, only to see his shot brilliantly saved by the Norwich keeper.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To liberate oneself; to free oneself; to become free (from or of something or someone)."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "liberate",
          "liberate"
        ],
        [
          "free",
          "free"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "break free"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (93a6c53 and 21a9316). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.