Housebreaks

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To train an animal, especially a dog, to behave appropriately inside the home ; to unlawfully enter a building, often to commit theft
2. The process of teaching a pet to live inside without causing damage or mess ; the act of breaking into a house without permission
3. Training an animal for suitable domestic behavior ; forcing entry into a dwelling unlawfully

Etymology: "Housebreaks" is the third-person singular form of "housebreak," a verb meaning to train a pet to relieve itself outdoors rather than inside. The verb is built from "house" and "break," but its history runs backwards: it was back-formed from the older adjective "housebroken," meaning a pet already trained in this way. Speakers saw "housebroken" and, reasoning that the adjective came from a verb, created "housebreak" as the supposed source, when in fact the verb grew out of the adjective. The sense of "breaking" here is the older one of taming or subduing, as in breaking a horse to saddle or breaking a wild animal to human ways. The house in question is the domestic dwelling, so a housebroken animal is one tamed to live within human domestic spaces. The same idea of "breaking" an animal to obedience appears in other animal-training verbs.

Synonyms: house-trains, potty trains, teaches, trains, educates