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say it: BROH-kuhn
broken is an adjective meaning "physically and forcibly separated into pieces or cracked or split". It is pronounced /ˈbɹoʊkən/ — BROH-kuhn. It carries 13 recorded senses.
physically and forcibly separated into pieces or cracked or split
“a broken mirror”
“a broken tooth”
“a broken leg”
“his neck is broken”
not continuous in space, time, or sequence or varying abruptly
“broken lines of defense”
“a broken cable transmission”
“broken sleep”
“tear off the stub above the broken line”
“a broken note”
“broken sobs”
subdued or brought low in condition or status
“brought low”
“a broken man”
“his broken spirit”
thrown into a state of disarray or confusion
“troops fleeing in broken ranks”
“a confused mass of papers on the desk”
“the small disordered room”
“with everything so upset”
destroyed financially
“the broken fortunes of the family”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for broken come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.