breach

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a personal or social separation, as between opposing factions

   A breach opened up between the two friends that could never be fixed.

2. 2
   verb

   to make an opening or gap in

   We need to breach the castle wall if we wish to severely penetrate their defenses.

3. 3
   verb

   to act in disregard of laws, rules, contracts, or promises

   Your actions obviously breached the rules we had set in place.

4. 4
   noun

   A gap or opening made by breaking or battering, as in a wall, fortification or levee / embankment; the space between the parts of a solid body rent by violence.

   "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead."

5. 5
   noun

   The act of breaking, in a figurative sense.

   But were the poet to make a total difression from his subject, and introduce a new actor, nowise connected with the personages, the imagination, feeling a breach in transition, would enter coldly into the new scene;

6. 6
   noun

   A breaking or infraction of a law, or of any obligation or tie; violation; non-fulfillment.

   breach of promise

7. 7
   noun

   A breaking up of amicable relations, a falling out.

   There's fallen between him and my lord / An unkind breach.

8. 8
   noun

   A difference in opinions, social class, etc.

   For London to have its own exclusive immigration policy would exacerbate the sense that immigration benefits only certain groups and disadvantages the rest. It would entrench the gap between London and the rest of the nation. And it would widen the breach between the public and the elite that has helped fuel anti-immigrant hostility.

Etymology

From Middle English breche, from Old English bryċe (“fracture, breach”) and brǣċ (“breach, breaking, destruction”), from Proto-West Germanic *bruki, from Proto-Germanic *brukiz (“breach, fissure”) and *brēkō (“breaking”).