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/ˈaʊtbrˌeɪk/ Listen

noun

outbreak n.

A bursting forth; eruption; insurrection; mutiny; revolt. "Mobs and outbreaks." "The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind."

A sudden beginning of a violent event; as, the outbreak of hostilities between ethnic groups.

A sudden occurrence or manifestation; usually of disease or emotion, in one person or a group; as, an outbreak of measles among the students; he had an outbreak of shingles; an outbreak of nervousness in the mob.

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Etymology of 'Outbreak'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Outbreak" Quotes from Famous Books

... because it tells you of the sudden deaths of men and women that you knew intimately, and the prickly heat covers you with a garment, and you sit down and write: "A slight increase of sickness is reported from the Khuda Janta Khan District. The outbreak is purely sporadic in its nature, and, thanks to the energetic efforts of the District authorities, is now almost at an end. It is, however, with deep regret we record the ...

— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various

... cheers greeted each additional sum. That was the financial germ from which grew the wonderful Arabian Nights city by the bay. It was typically Californian—that scene—and typically Californian the spirit back of it. And four years later, when the outbreak of the war brought temporary panic, there was no diminution in that spirit. Whether it was a "Buying-Day," a "Beach Day," an "Automobile Parade," a "Prosperity Dinner," San Francisco was always ready to insist that everything was going well. It ...

— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin

... he cried, with an outbreak of the most heartfelt grief; "you seem more fit to be in your mother's nursery, than to be knocked about in ...

— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur

... tripping doon the stair,'' rapt by the climbing passion from their strawberry-leaved surroundings into starlit spaces. Nay, ourselves, too — the douce, respectable mediocrities that we are — which of us but might recall some fearful outbreak whose details are mercifully unknown to the household that calls us breadwinner and chief? What marvel that up yonder the Hunter smiles? When he knows that every one in his ken, the tinker with the statesman, has caught his bugle blast and ...

— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame

... influenced by vulgar motives rather than by the noble and magnanimous impulses which formed part of his character. It was not the consideration of his own possible recall or of the mutability of fortune, nor was it any apprehension of the outbreak of a Macedonian war at certainly no distant date, that prevented the self-reliant and confident hero, with whom everything had hitherto succeeded beyond belief, from accomplishing the destruction of the unhappy city, which fifty years ...

— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

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