Fracture

Think of something hard breaking in a crisp, snapping manner, and you've just imagined a fracture. The word is most often applied to a broken bone, but it can used to describe any sharp, sudden break of something solid.

  • Pronunciation: /ˈfræktʃə/
  • English Description: if a bone or other hard substance fractures, or if it is fractured, it breaks or cracks
  • Chinese Translation: 断裂(Duan4 Lie4)
  • Spanish Translation: fracturar
  • STORY: The Latin frāctus means "broken," and its descendant fracture can mean any break, though it's most often associated with a hard — maybe even brittle — material, such as a bone, a rock, or the earth’s crust. When something softer is split we say it is torn. For example, when we say someone broke an arm, we are referring to the bone, not the muscle; we'd say the muscle is torn. When someone funny "breaks us up," we might say "you fracture me!"

EXAMPLE SENTENCE:

  • The court said Cestaro raised his arms in surrender, but was beaten and kicked by the officers, suffering fractures and other injuries. US News Apr 7, 2015

  • The fractured GOP field seems light on star power compared with past elections.

P.S: New word description, story and part of "EXAMPLE SENTENCE" are cited in Vocabulary.com