Rupture
noun, verb ·2 syllables ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A burst, split, or break. countable, uncountable
"Hatch from the egg, that soon, / Bursting with kindly rupture, forth disclosed / Their callow young."
- 2 the act of making a sudden noisy break wordnet
- 3 A social breach or break, between individuals or groups. countable, uncountable
"He knew that policy would disincline Napoleon from a rupture with his family."
- 4 a personal or social separation (as between opposing factions) wordnet
- 5 A break or tear in soft tissue, such as a muscle. countable, uncountable
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- 6 state of being torn or burst open wordnet
- 7 A failure mode in which a tough ductile material pulls apart rather than cracking. countable, uncountable
- 1 To burst, break through, or split, as under pressure. ambitransitive
"The cracking sound, he explained, as far as I, a non-plumber, could understand, was the sound of the overworked, undermaintained and weirdly installed heating unit’s core rupturing and spilling water into the basement."
- 2 separate or cause to separate abruptly wordnet
- 3 To dehisce irregularly. intransitive
Example
More examples"Rupture stress is much higher in the case of metals as it is for plastics."
Etymology
Borrowed from Middle French rupture, or its source, Latin ruptūra (“a breaking, rupture (of a limb or vein)”) and Medieval Latin ruptūra (“a road, a field, a form of feudal tenure, a tax, etc.”), from the participle stem of rumpere (“to break, burst”).
Related phrases
More for "rupture"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.