Make a rupture in the ranks of the enemy or one's own by quitting or fleeing (military usage)

Usage examples of breaking.

The arrest of the abnormal breaking down of the tissues, and the prevention of emaciation.

Smith gasped, his Highland accent breaking through the English veneer, as it always did in stressful situations.

That there can be no forgiveness of sins, thus no salvation but only eternal damnation, apart from self-examination, the knowledge and acknowledgment, confession and breaking off of sins, that is, apart from repentance?

In retrospect, Addle realized that the whole event should have been much more terrifying: breaking into a cemetery near midnight, on an evening when the moon was a great bloodshot eye in the sky.

In doses of from twenty to sixty drops of the fluid extract, administered in a cup of warm water or herb-tea on going to bed, we have found it very effectual for breaking up recent colds.

Twenty-five feet above them, from the aft part of the sail, the Bigmouth antenna raised steadily upward, the top of the mast breaking the surface.

The commons appeared determined no longer to brook a delay of the agrarian law, and extreme violence was on the eve of being resorted to, when it was ascertained from the burning of the country-houses and the flight of the peasants that the Volscians were at hand: this circumstance checked the sedition that was now ripe and almost breaking out.

He was so ashamed of breaking ahimsa that his body fell slack and the other boys managed to pin him to the floor.

I regarded aikido as a gentler discipline than karate or kung-fu, and one more likely to prevail without breaking bones.

She uses the glove box for the last time, breaking open a vial of sodium fluoride solution and injecting an aliquot into every one of the cell cultures.

She shewed me her house and her jewels, told me the story of her amours with the duke, of her breaking with him on account of his perpetual infidelities, and of her marriage with a man she despised, but who was forced on her by her position.

An Innocent Amourette One feels almost brutally rude in breaking in upon the privacy of this little romance.

The backwash of the breaking waves was a broad white road, cut aslant by the hull of the fishing boat.

Intelligence soon reached him, however, of the magnitude of the blow aimed by Lee, and, hastily breaking up his camps on the Rappahannock, he hurried to attack the force assailing his communications.

Finally I was astonished to find myself reflecting that I should have had no scruple in breaking the bank in the way suggested, if it had only been for the sake of making the company laugh.