noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   Synonym of housebreaking.

Verb

1. 1
   To train an animal to avoid urinating or defecating in the house, except within a litterbox, toilet, or other receptacle. US, transitive
2. 2
   train (a pet) to live cleanly in a house wordnet
3. 3
   To break into a house, typically to burgle it. US, intransitive

Synonyms

All synonyms

acclimateacclimatizeaccommodateaccustomadaptadjust

Example

More examples

"It took me a lot less time to housebreak my German shepherd than it took to housebreak my other dog."

Etymology

From house + break, back-formed from housebroken in the animal-training sense.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.