sb. [f. verbal phr. to break up: see BREAK v. 56. For the stress see BREAK-DOWN.] The action or fact of breaking up; disruption, separation into parts, disintegration (lit. and fig.); e.g., decay of animal functions; change from fine or settled weather, or from frost; dispersal or dissolution of a meeting, company, society or system.

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1795.  Ld. Auckland, Corr. (1862), III. 292. The sudden break-up of Lord Fitzwilliam’s Government in Ireland.

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1836.  S. Laing, Trav. Norway (L.). The break-up of the cold weather soon followed.

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1836–9.  Todd, Cycl. Anat. & Phys., II. 630/1. The break-up which … follows … morbid alterations of the heart.

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1864.  Times, 23 Dec., 4/4. The whole College … echoed with the sounds of mirth and song that usually mark the break-up of a large English school.

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1878.  Browning, Poets Croisic, xxxvii. An epitaph On earth’s break-up.

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  attrib.  1843.  J. T. Coleridge, in Arnold’s Life & Corr. (1844), I. i. 11. One break-up party was held in the junior common room at the end of each term.

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