fracture
Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
fracture/ˈfraktʃə(r)/
▶noun
- 1 a crack or break, especially in a bone or a rock stratum.
■ the cracking or breaking of a hard object or material.
■ the shape of the surface formed by a freshly broken rock or mineral.
- 2 Phonetics the replacement of a simple vowel by a diphthong owing to the influence of a following sound, typically a consonant.
■ (of a group) break up or fragment.
– origin ME: from Fr., or from L. fractura, from frangere ‘to break’.
'fracture' also found in these Oxford entries:
cataclasis
- clean
- coaptation
- Colles' fracture
- comminuted
- compound fracture
- conchoidal
- Fraktur
- greenstick fracture
- hairline
- joint
- plastic
- Pott's fracture
- simple fracture
- vein
