breach
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
6 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "breach", 6-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "breach" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "breach" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
breach is aEnglishnoun. It means: A gap or opening made by breaking or battering, as in a wall, fortification or levee / embankment; the space between the parts of a solid body rent by violence. Pronounced /bɹiːtʃ/. It ranks #5,764 in English word frequency. Often confused with break and bread.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | breach |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /bɹiːtʃ/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #5,764 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for breach is 6 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /bɹiːtʃ/. Corpus data places it at rank #5,764 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 9 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 9 documented wrong-spelling variants for breach, with forms such as "bbreach", "berach", and "braech". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "break", "bread", "bream", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English breche, from Old English bryċe (“fracture, breach”) and brǣċ (“breach, breaking, destruction”), from Proto-West Germanic *bruki, from Proto-Germanic *brukiz (“breach, fissure”) and *brēkō (“breaking”). Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is breach, spelled B-R-E-A-C-H, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A gap or opening made by breaking or battering, as in a wall, fortification or levee / embankment; the space between the parts of a solid body rent by violence.
- 2The act of breaking, in a figurative sense.
- 3A breaking or infraction of a law, or of any obligation or tie; violation; non-fulfillment.
- 4A breaking up of amicable relations, a falling out.
- 5A difference in opinions, social class, etc.
- 6A breaking of waters, as over a vessel or a coastal defence; the waters themselves.
- 7A breaking out upon; an assault.
- 8A bruise; a wound.
- 9A hernia; a rupture.
Etymology
From Middle English breche, from Old English bryċe (“fracture, breach”) and brǣċ (“breach, breaking, destruction”), from Proto-West Germanic *bruki, from Proto-Germanic *brukiz (“breach, fissure”) and *brēkō (“breaking”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: bbreach,berach,braech,breacch,breachh,breahc,brecah,brreach,rbeach
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for breach
Misspelling Variants of "breach"
Frequency rank: #5,764 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter B in our English index: