fracture

1. 1.

   breaking of hard tissue such as bone

   “it was a nasty fracture”

   “the break seems to have been caused by a fall”

   Synonymsbreak

   Broaderinjury

   Narrowercomminuted fracturecomplete fracturecompound fracturecompression fracturedepressed fracturedisplaced fracturefatigue fracturehairline fractureincomplete fractureimpacted fracture
2. 2.

   (geology) a crack in the earth's crust resulting from the displacement of one side with respect to the other

   “they built it right over a geological fault”

   “he studied the faulting of the earth's crust”

   Synonymsfaultfaultinggeological faultshiftbreak

   Broadercrack

   NarrowerDenali Faultinclined faultSan Andreas Fault
3. 3.

   the act of cracking something

   Synonymscrackcracking

   Broaderbreakage

Other forms of fracture

plural

fractures·

past tense

fractured·

present participle

fracturing·

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.

Questions about fracture

What does fracture mean?

fracture means "violate or abuse". That is the primary sense; the word has 9 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in fracture?

fracture has 2 syllables: frac-ture. The stress falls on "frac". In IPA it is /ˈfɹæktʃɚ/.

What is another word for fracture?

Close synonyms include break, break, fault, faulting, geological fault. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is fracture a common word?

fracture is banded "Common" — everyday vocabulary in speech and writing. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.