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PlainSpell

housebreak

/ˈhaʊs.bɹeɪk/verb, noun

housebreak is a verb meaning “To train an animal to avoid urinating or defecating in the house, except within a litterbox, toilet, or other receptacle” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled H-O-U-S-E-B-R-E-A-K, and it appears about once in every 62 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does housebreak mean?

verb

  1. 1

    USTo train an animal to avoid urinating or defecating in the house, except within a litterbox, toilet, or other receptacle.

  2. 2

    USTo break into a house, typically to burgle it.

noun

  1. 1

    Synonym of housebreaking.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce housebreak?

  • /ˈhaʊs.bɹeɪk/

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Forms of housebreak

  • housebreaks present, singular, he/she/it, plural
  • housebreaking participle, present
  • housebroke past
  • housebroken participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is housebreak?

Housebreak appears about once in every 62 million words in written English, the 246,401st most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Housebreak in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense train an animal to avoid urinating in the house:

LanguageWords
Portuguesedomesticar

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does housebreak come from?

From house + break, back-formed from housebroken in the animal-training sense.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).