breaking news

noun

"breaking-news" is a 12-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

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

Unranked
below top-frequency English
13
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - News that has either just happened or is currently happening.

Corpus desk

Index EN-breaking-news · breaking news · English

breaking news · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 13 letters
  • VOW-4 4 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.

Key facts for breaking news
PropertyValue
Headwordbreaking news
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters13
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “breaking news” in English

breaking newsranks outside the top 100,000 English headwords, in the long tail of specialist, archaic, or seldom-used vocabulary, exactly the territory where a reader stops mid-sentence to double-check spelling.

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

Rare enough to double-check

breaking news is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "News that has either just happened or is currently happening.".

breaking news doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is breaking news, spelled B-R-E-A-K-I-N-G- -N-E-W-S.

Definition

  1. 1
    News that has either just happened or is currently happening.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how breaking news appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. Breaking news may contain incomplete information, factual errors, or poor editing because of a rush to publication.
  2. There is also breaking news that the delayed Crossrail project in London cannot be completed without a further £80 million injection of funds.

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 "breaking news"?
"breaking news" is spelled B-R-E-A-K-I-N-G- -N-E-W-S.
What does "breaking news" mean?
As a noun, "breaking news" means: News that has either just happened or is currently happening.
What language does "breaking news" come from?
"breaking news" 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.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list