Jawbreaker

noun, slang

noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A large, extremely hard, boiled candy, typically spherical.

    "If somebody microwaves a large jawbreaker and nibbles on the outside, a crack can cause molten candy to burst out and cause painful burns. Exploding jawbreakers have been documented on television news and in police reports."

  2. 2
    a word that is hard to pronounce wordnet
  3. 3
    A long, hard-to-pronounce word.

    "The word “callipygous” is something of a jawbreaker."

  4. 4
    a large round hard candy wordnet
  5. 5
    A hard blow to the side of the face. slang

    "Bendoff went pluckily forward, but only to receive a jawbreaker from Couper's left, […]"

Synonyms

All synonyms
gobstoppergobstoppergrandiloquencejaw-twistermouthfulmouthful

Example

More examples

"A jawbreaker is a round candy, multi-layered like a pearl."

Etymology

Compound of jaw + breaker.

More for "jawbreaker"

SynonymsSentencesPronunciationTranslate

Next best steps

Find stronger synonymsSee usage examplesCheck pronunciationBrowse writing guides

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