fracture

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The act or process of breaking.
2. n. The condition of having been broken or ruptured: "a sudden and irreparable fracture of the established order” ( W. Bruce Lincoln).
3. n. A break, rupture, or crack, especially in bone or cartilage.
4. n. Mineralogy The characteristic manner in which a mineral breaks.
5. n. Mineralogy The characteristic appearance of the surface of a broken mineral.
6. n. Geology A crack or fault in a rock.
7. v. To cause to break: The impact fractured a bone.
8. v. To undergo a break in (a bone): He fractured his ankle in the fall.
9. v. To disrupt or destroy as if by breaking: fractured the delicate balance of power.
10. v. To abuse or misuse flagrantly, as by violating rules: ignorant writers who fracture the language.
11. v. Slang To cause to laugh heartily: "Jack Benny fractured audiences . . . for more than 50 years” ( Newsweek).
12. v. To undergo a fracture. See Synonyms at break.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A breaking or a break; especially, a partial or total separation of parts of a continuous solid body under the action of a force; specifically, in surgery, the breaking of a bone. The fracture of a bone is simple when the bone only is divided; compound when the breaking of the bone is accompanied by a laceration of the integuments; and comminute or comminuted when the bone is broken in more than one place. Fractures are also termed transverse, longitudinal, or oblique, according to their direction in regard to the axis of the bone.
2. n. A broken surface, with reference to texture or configuration, or to manner of breaking; specifically, in mineralogy, the characteristic breakage of a substance, or appearance presented on a surface other than that of cleavage: as, a compact fracture; a fibrous fracture; foliated, striated, or conchoidal fracture, etc.
3. n. Forcible separation or disunion; quarreling.
4. To break; cause a fracture in; crack: as, to fracture a bone or the skull.
5. Synonyms Cleave, Split, etc. See rend, and fracture, n.
6. To break; undergo fracture.
7. n. In phonology, same as breaking, 2.

Wiktionary

1. n. the act of breaking, or something that has broken, especially that in bone or cartilage
2. n. geology a fault or crack in a rock
3. v. to break, or cause something to break

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The act of breaking or snapping asunder; rupture; breach.
2. n. (Surg.) The breaking of a bone.
3. n. (Min.) The texture of a freshly broken surface
4. v. To cause a fracture or fractures in; to break; to burst asunder; to crack; to separate the continuous parts of

WordNet 3.0

1. v. break into pieces
2. n. breaking of hard tissue such as bone
3. v. become fractured
4. v. fracture a bone of
5. v. violate or abuse
6. n. the act of cracking something
7. v. interrupt, break, or destroy
8. v. break (a bone)
9. n. (geology) a crack in the earth's crust resulting from the displacement of one side with respect to the other