break
1. To cause to be {broken} (in any sense). "Your latest patch
to the editor broke the paragraph commands."
2. (Of a program) To stop temporarily, so that it may
debugged. The place where it stops is a "{breakpoint}".
3. To send an {EIA-232} break (two character widths of line
high) over a {serial line}.
4. [Unix] To strike whatever key currently causes the tty
driver to send SIGINT to the current process. Normally,
break, 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 a few years ago.
6. {pipeline break}.
[{Jargon File}]