breaker

plural breakers

1. Something that breaks (something else).

   a breaker of men's souls

   Synonyms: destroyer, wrecker

2. A machine for breaking rocks, or for breaking coal at the mines.
3. The building in which such a machine is placed.

   at the coal breaker

   1 more example

   A: Is John at the tipple? B: No, he's at the breaker today.

4. A person or company that specializes in breaking things; their yard.
   1. abbreviationellipsisoftenpluralEllipsis of shipbreaker, a shipbreaking company or its yard.

      Synonyms: scrapper, wrecker, knacker, breaker's yard, more at wreck yard

   2. abbreviationellipsisoftenpluralEllipsis of car breaker, a car breaking company or its yard.

      Synonyms: scrapper, wrecker, knacker, breaker's yard, more at wreck yard

   3. abbreviationellipsisoftenpluralEllipsis of horsebreaker.

      A hasty and passionate breaker will often make a really goodtempered young horse an inveterate gibber

      1831-1850, William Youatt, On the Structure and the Diseases of the Horse

      1 more example

      My beauty endures even as I endure; still, if thou wilt, oh rash man, have thy will; but blame not me if passion mount thy reason, as the Egyptian breakers used to mount a colt, and guide it whither thou wilt not.

      1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC

      Synonyms: scrapper, wrecker, knacker, breaker's yard, more at wreck yard

5. in pluralA wave breaking into foam against the shore, or against a sandbank, or a rock or reef near the surface, considered a useful warning to ships of an underwater hazard

   And then went down to the ship, Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea

   1925, Ezra Pound, Canto I

   2 more examples

   Now and then in the lagoon you hear the leaping of a fish[…]. And above all, ceaseless like time, is the dull roar of the breakers on the reef.

   1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter 53, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC, pages 279–280

   There came a cry "Oh, there be breakers dead ahead!" / From the collier Nightingale

   1979, Stan Rogers, “The Flowers of Bermuda” (track 6), in Between the Breaks ... Live!, Dundas, Ontario: Fogarty's Cove Music

6. colloquialA breakdancer.

   Synonyms: B-boy, B-girl

7. USdatedA user of CB radio.

   Their radios had been blocked by a breaker calling himself Yankee Bucket Mouth.

   2015, Dave Wise, Stuart Wise, Like A Summer With A Thousand Julys

8. abbreviationellipsisbusinessEllipsis of circuit breaker.

   breaker panel

1. USdatedUsed to open a conversation or call for a response on CB radio.

   breaker one nine

   1 more example

   Breaker to the Bandit

   1977, Smokey and the Bandit, spoken by Sheriff Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason)

plural breakers

1. A small cask of liquid kept permanently in a ship’s boat in case of shipwreck.

   Then the conversation broke off, and there was little more talking, only a noise of men going backwards and forwards, and of putting down of kegs and the hollow gurgle of good liquor being poured from breakers into the casks.

   [1898], J[ohn] Meade Falkner, Moonfleet, London; Toronto, Ont.: Jonathan Cape, published 1934, →OCLC