fracture

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English fracture,^[2] borrowed from Middle French fracture^[3][4] (Old French, of the 14th century, in Etymonline)^[5] or directly Latin frāctūra (“a breach, break, cleft”),^[5][3][6][7] from frāctus, the past participle of frangō (“to break”),^{[8][5][9][10]} with the suffix -ūra.^[4][9] The Latin verb comes from Proto-Indo-European *bhreg- (“to break”),^[5][8] the root of break.^[3][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The breaking of a bone: before 1425, in a Middle English translation of Guy de Chauliac's surgery, which speaks of "fractures and dislocacions".^[2][3] Etymonline dates it to the early 15th century,^[5] while the OED, whose entry is not fully revised, has its first quotation in 1525.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The word came into English as a term of surgery, and the OED notes that the medical use is the earliest.^[11][2] It widened to the act of breaking in general, and in 1641 to the result of breaking, a crack or split.^[11] Johnson (1755) gave both "breach; separation of continuous parts" and the breaking of a bone.^[12] In mineralogy, from 1794, fracture is the characteristic look of a fresh, irregularly broken surface of a mineral.^[11][5] In 1891 it entered phonetics for the change of a simple vowel into a diphthong before certain consonants, as in Old English.^[11] The verb is implied in the participle fractured from 1612,^[3][9] though the OED's first quotation of the verb is from 1767;^[11] the intransitive "to break" dates from 1830 in Etymonline, but only from 1885 in the OED.^[5][11] In American slang the verb has meant to beat someone up (1939), to astonish (1944) and to amuse greatly (1946).^[13][11]

Timeline

• before 1425 – the breaking of a bone.^[2][3]
• 1525 – a fracture of a bone in surgery (simple, compound, comminuted fracture).^[11]
• 1612 – verb, implied in fractured.^[3][9]
• 1641 – a crack, division or split.^[11]
• 1794 – the appearance of the broken surface of a mineral.^[11][5]
• 1830 – verb, intransitive, to break.^[5]
• 1891 – in phonetics, the change of a vowel into a diphthong.^[11]
• 1946 – verb, to amuse or excite greatly (US slang).^[11]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. The act of breaking, or the state of being broken.
2. A break or crack in a bone, or a tear in cartilage: The X-ray showed a small fracture of the wrist.
3. A crack or split in a hard material, or in rock strata.
4. (mineralogy) The look of the surface of a mineral when it is broken irregularly.
5. (phonetics) The change of a simple vowel into a diphthong under the influence of a following consonant; breaking.

Verb

1. To break or crack something, especially a bone: She fractured her ankle on the ice.
2. To damage or split apart as if by breaking.
3. To break or crack.
4. (US slang) To amuse or delight greatly.

Word family

• fracturable
• fractural
• fracturer
• postfracture
• refracture
• compound fracture
• greenstick fracture
• incomplete fracture

Related words

• fractal
• fraction
• fragment
• fragile
• frail
• infraction
• refract
• break

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
10. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
11. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com