Definition of Breakdown

Breakdown

The act or result of breaking down, as of a carriage; downfall.

A noisy, rapid, shuffling dance engaged in competitively by a number of persons or pairs in succession, as among the colored people of the Southern United States, and so called, perhaps, because the exercise is continued until most of those who take part in it break down.

Any rude, noisy dance performed by shuffling the feet, usually by one person at a time.

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Breakdown Quotations

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
Bertrand Russell

A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine innings.
Earl Wilson

For the parents of a Little Leaguer, a baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown into innings.
Earl Wilson

Nobody gets a nervous breakdown or a heart attack from selling kerosene to gentle country folk from the back of a tanker in Somerset.
Roald Dahl

We will see a breakdown of the family and family values if we decide to approve same-sex marriage, and if we decide to establish homosexuality as an acceptable alternative lifestyle with all the benefits that go with equating it with the heterosexual lifestyle.
Jerry Falwell

The worker can unionize, go out on strike; mothers are divided from each other in homes, tied to their children by compassionate bonds; our wildcat strikes have most often taken the form of physical or mental breakdown.
Adrienne Rich

I was certainly open for something being on the edge of a nervous breakdown, perplexed by my own sexuality. I was gay.
Lionel Blue

The boarding-school experience in Paris was very hard, I didn't put up with it very well. I was sick all the time, or in any case frail, on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
Jacques Derrida

Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death.
R. D. Laing

Progressive rhetoric has the effect of concealing social crisis and moral breakdown by presenting them as the birth pangs of a new order.
Christopher Lasch

And revolutions always mean the breakdown of old authority.
Hu Shih

I love Mariah Carey. Remember the breakdown? I loved the breakdown.
Kathy Griffin

I had a woman breakdown and cry when she met me which was difficult to deal with because immediately when someone starts to cry, you want to comfort them, you know, "Poor thing." I comforted her. I tried to make her feel better.
Elijah Wood

A bad liver is to a Frenchman what a nervous breakdown is to an American. Everyone has had one and everyone wants to talk about it.
Art Buchwald

Yippee! I can't believe I made it. It feels like a long haul to get here. I'm so fine with it. People want you to have some sort of breakdown, but I'm relieved to be 40 years old, and I've lived a life.
Nicole Kidman

My way of dealing with the world has always been to make fun of it and observe it but not take part in it.That's how I became a writer. But when you have kids, suddenly you have to be part of things. It leads almost to a breakdown because your whole defense mechanism is now really destructive.
Judd Apatow

I always felt that anorexia was the form of breakdown most readily available to adolescent girls.
Kate Beckinsale

I have a nervous breakdown in the film and in one scene I get to stand at the top of the stairs waving an empty sherry bottle which is, of course, a typical scene from my daily life, so isn't much of a stretch.
Emma Thompson

I believe in work, hard work, and long hours of work. Men do not breakdown from overwork, but from worry and dissipation.
Charles Evans Hughes

We were talking about really getting Europe on its feet. It was our hope that there would be a breakdown of trade barriers in Europe first, and then eventually a breakdown internationally, which would help increase trade with Europe.
W. Averell Harriman

On the other hand, I believe there's hope, because the breakdown and the repair are happening simultaneously.
Kathryn Bigelow

Even institutions of State, such as the judiciary, were seriously weakened, to the extent that the citizenry justifiably feared a breakdown in law and order. The business community was hit by a slump in sales and confidence, leading to reduced earnings and loss of jobs.
Kamisese Mara

Barry and I were in the middle of building a house, and I was in the midst of having a nervous breakdown, because that's what you do when you build a house.
Cynthia Weil

A quick glance at the American left reveals a movement in the midst of a nervous breakdown, displaying behavior that goes beyond inconsistency into the realm of bipolar moods and multiple personality disorders.
Michael Medved

I've read a couple of things that I was sort of close to having a nervous breakdown. But I don't think I was. I was very, very tired. It was a really difficult time.
Kate Bush

I was just absolutely exhausted. The media said I've been treated for a nervous breakdown. All that stuff I just took as people taking the opportunity when you're down to give you a kick.
John Hewson

The last thing we need is yet another makeup company. Even I have a nervous breakdown when I go through the department store makeup floor.
Lauren Hutton

Whether or not we can save Lake Michigan, whether or not we can avoid a breakdown in our criminal justice system are more important than whether or not I'm going to be governor.
Bill Scott

I have been to hell and back. I had a very, very bad nervous breakdown.
Andy Gibb

I'm taking one thing at a time. With the children and launching my solo career it would drive me to a nervous breakdown if I tried to organise a wedding on top of that.
Natasha Hamilton

More Breakdown Quotations

Breakdown Translations

breakdown in Italian is perdita, panna
breakdown in Swedish is haveri

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