breakthrough
Other forms: breakthroughs
An amazing discovery or a huge amount of progress can be called a breakthrough. The discovery of penicillin in 1928 was a breakthrough for modern medicine.
A personal breakthrough might be overcoming your fear of spiders once and for all. A bigger breakthrough, one that affects many people, is the invention of indoor plumbing. There's a sense of suddenness and drama associated with most breakthroughs. The word started out with a military meaning of literally "breaking through a barrier" in 1918. By the 1930s, it came to have the second meaning of "abrupt solution."
- MLA
- APA
- Chicago
Vocabulary lists containing breakthrough
Words included in the 2009 and 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests of fourth, eighth, and twelfth grade vocabulary. Read about the test here.
In letters addressed to an unnamed friend, Charlie describes his experiences as a high school freshman.
