breach of the peace

noun

"breach-of-the-peace" is a 16-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“breach of the peace” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
19
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - The legal offense of engaging in public behavior which is violent, rowdy, or disruptive.

Key facts for breach of the peace
PropertyValue
Headwordbreach of the peace
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters19
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Where “breach of the peace” sits in English frequency

breach of the peace falls outside the top-100,000 ranked English words, the long-tail zone of technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary, exactly where readers second-guess spellings most.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

breach of the peace is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.

breach of the peace doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.

No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is breach of the peace, spelled B-R-E-A-C-H- -O-F- -T-H-E- -P-E-A-C-E.

Definition

  1. 1
    The legal offense of engaging in public behavior which is violent, rowdy, or disruptive.
  2. 2
    Any public disturbance or disorderly behavior.

This word in other languages

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "breach of the peace"?
"breach of the peace" is spelled B-R-E-A-C-H- -O-F- -T-H-E- -P-E-A-C-E.
What does "breach of the peace" mean?
As a noun, "breach of the peace" means: The legal offense of engaging in public behavior which is violent, rowdy, or disruptive.
What language does "breach of the peace" come from?
"breach of the peace" is a English word. PlainSpell's reference spans five languages -- English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German -- with definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for each.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Using “breach of the peace”

The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.

  • The one correct English spelling is B-R-E-A-C-H- -O-F- -T-H-E- -P-E-A-C-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
  • Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source

Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list