Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A sudden, violent inroad or incursion; an irruption: opposed to outbreak.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A breaking in; inroad; invasion.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb transitive To break in; break into; make an incursion into; insert into; interrupt.
  • noun A sudden violent inroad or incursion; an irruption.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English *inbreken, from Old English inbrecan ("to break into"), equivalent to in- +‎ break. Cognate with Dutch inbreken ("to break in"), German einbrechen ("to break in").

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Examples

  • The cryptozoa who live around the meter will be paralyzed by the great inbreak of light from overhead ... then scatter like hell for lower, darker, wetter.

    Gravity's Rainbow Pynchon, Thomas 1978

  • He found his way along the level which had been driven to within nine feet of going through on the heading in which the inbreak of moss had taken place.

    The Underworld The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner James C. Welsh

  • Finally, to make the whole matter clear, let me repeat that this event, the inbreak of Self-consciousness, took place, or began to take place, an enormous time ago, perhaps in the beginning of the Neolithic Age.

    Pagan and Christian Creeds: Their Origin and Meaning 1920

  • It may be fairly interpreted as a symbol of Nature-dismemberment in Winter and resurrection in Spring; but we must also not forget that it may (and indeed must) have stood as an allegory of tribal dismemberment and reconciliation -- the tribe, conceived of as a divinity, having thus suffered and died through the inbreak of sin and the self-motive, and risen again into wholeness by the redemption of love and sacrifice.

    Pagan and Christian Creeds: Their Origin and Meaning 1920

  • The inbreak of self-consciousness brought out the facts of his inner life into ritualistic and afterwards into intellectual forms.

    Pagan and Christian Creeds: Their Origin and Meaning 1920

  • The inbreak of self-consciousness brought OUT the facts of his inner life into ritualistic and afterwards into intellectual forms.

    Pagan and Christian creeds: their origin and meaning Edward Carpenter 1886

  • It may be fairly interpreted as a symbol of Nature-dismemberment in Winter and resurrection in Spring; but we must also not forget that it may (and indeed must) have stood as an allegory of TRIBAL dismemberment and reconciliation -- the tribe, conceived of as a divinity, having thus suffered and died through the inbreak of sin and the self-motive, and risen again into wholeness by the redemption of love and sacrifice.

    Pagan and Christian creeds: their origin and meaning Edward Carpenter 1886

  • Finally, to make the whole matter clear, let me repeat that this event, the inbreak of Self-consciousness, took place, or BEGAN to take place, an enormous time ago, perhaps in the beginning of the Neolithic Age.

    Pagan and Christian creeds: their origin and meaning Edward Carpenter 1886

  • But when all was over, when we were trooping in decent silence from the graveyard gate and down the path to the settlement, a sudden inbreak of a different spirit startled and perhaps dismayed us.

    In the South Seas Robert Louis Stevenson 1872

  • The event that had happened was not an outbreak within the walls of the garrison, but an inbreak of those whose purpose was to rescue the captives.

    Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series Bracebridge Hemyng 1871

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