breach

What it means

1. A gap or opening made by breaking or battering, as in a wall, fortification or levee / embankment; the space between the parts of a solid body rent by violence.

   "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead."

   1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]

   1 more example

   Services between Glasgow Queen Street and Edinburgh Waverley via Falkirk High are currently suspended, following a 30-metre breach of the Union Canal that occurred on August 12 after torrential rain and thunderstorms. The thousands of gallons of water that cascaded onto the railway line below washed away track, ballast and overhead line equipment, and undermined embankments along a 300-metre section of Scotland's busiest rail link.

   2020 August 26, “Network News: Major flood damage severs key Edinburgh-Glasgow rail artery”, in Rail, page 21

   Synonyms: break, rupture, fissure

2. The act of breaking, in a figurative sense.

   But were the poet to make a total difression from his subject, and introduce a new actor, nowise connected with the personages, the imagination, feeling a breach in transition, would enter coldly into the new scene;

   1748, David Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Section 3, § 12

3. lawA breaking or infraction of a law, or of any obligation or tie; violation; non-fulfillment.

   breach of promise

In a sentence

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead."

1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]

Where it comes from

1. Proto-Germanic*brukiz“breach, fissure”
2. Proto-West Germanic*bruki
3. Old Englishbryċe“fracture, breach”
4. Middle Englishbreche
5. Englishbreach

From Middle English breche, from Old English bryċe (“fracture, breach”) and brǣċ (“breach, breaking, destruction”), from Proto-West Germanic *bruki, from Proto-Germanic *brukiz (“breach, fissure”) and *brēkō (“breaking”).