break new ground
"break-new-ground" is a 14-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“break new ground” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 16
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To begin excavating and levelling earth for a new building, or, originally, for cultivation.
Corpus desk
Index EN-break-new-ground · break new ground · English
break new ground · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 16 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "B" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | break new ground |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 16 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “break new ground” in English
Rare enough to double-check
break new ground is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for break new ground, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, which usually means its spelling is distinct enough that readers don't reach for a similar-looking word instead.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, 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 break new ground, spelled B-R-E-A-K- -N-E-W- -G-R-O-U-N-D.
Definition
- 1To begin excavating and levelling earth for a new building, or, originally, for cultivation.
- 2To initiate a new venture, especially something never before attempted; to advance or innovate.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how break new ground appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
One of the Birmingham R.C.W. diesel multiple-units on the Calder Valley service broke new ground on August 12 when it was enployed for a works excursion from Halifax to Windermere, [...].
Some of these things were possible to do with earlier A.I. models. But OpenAI has broken new ground, too. According to the company, GPT-4 is more capable and accurate than the original ChatGPT, and it performs astonishingly well on a variety of tests […]
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.