phrasal verb · neutral
break down
/breɪk daʊn/BREAK DOWN
speakingtask2
1) (of machines) to stop working; 2) to lose control emotionally; 3) to analyse something into smaller parts
Examples
“The car broke down on the motorway.”
“During the hearing he suddenly broke down and started crying.”
“Let's break down the survey results by age group.”
Band 8 sentence
“When the main server broke down, the research team lost a week of data and had to reconstruct the experiments.”
Collocations
- break down + machine (e.g. break down the printer)
- break down + data/issue (e.g. break down the results)
- break down in tears
Word family
breakdown nounbroken down adjectivebroke down verb (past)
Common mistakes
breaked down→broke down
break down the problem / break down it→break it down
break the machine→break down
Say it for a higher band
5stop working→6malfunction→7+break down
Synonyms
malfunction
collapse
Easily confused
fall apart
“When the company fell apart, hundreds of people lost their jobs.”
Related words
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In break …
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