break

   1.  vt. To cause to be {broken} (in any sense). "Your latest patch to
   the editor broke the paragraph commands."

   2.  v.  (of  a program) To stop temporarily, so that it may debugged.
   The place where it stops is a breakpoint.

   3.  [techspeak]  vi. To send an RS-232 break (two character widths of
   line high) over a serial comm line.

   4.  [Unix] vi. To strike whatever key currently causes the tty driver
   to  send  SIGINT  to  the current process. Normally, break (sense 3),
   delete or {control-C} does this.

   5.  break  break  may be said to interrupt a conversation (this is an
   example   of   verb   doubling).   This   usage   comes   from  radio
   communications,   which   in   turn   probably   came  from  landline
   telegraph/teleprinter  usage,  as  badly abused in the Citizen's Band
   craze of the early 1980s.

[glossary]