Unbroken

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /ʌnˈbɹoʊkn̩/

Definitions

1. continuous or whole, without any interruption, damage, or separation
2. remaining whole and intact, without fractures, breaks, or interruptions
3. Not interrupted or divided at any point, maintaining continuous presence throughout ; remaining whole and undamaged, showing no signs of breaks or fractures

Etymology: The word is a straightforward compound: "un-" meaning "not," added to "broken." Its ancestor in Old English was "unġebrocen," which already carried the sense of something left whole and undivided. The Old English "ġebrocen" is the past participle of "brecan," "to break," so the word is simply "not broken" in the most literal sense. The idea of wholeness has long been attached to the word. Its Dutch cousin "ongebroken" and the German "ungebrochen" share the same structure, showing that the notion of an unshattered, uninterrupted thing was common across the early Germanic languages. Its modern meaning of continuous or uninterrupted, as in an unbroken record, grows naturally out of that original physical sense of a thing that has not been split apart.

Synonyms: intact, uninterrupted, continuous, whole, undamaged

Antonyms: broken, fragmented, disrupted, damaged, interrupted