breakthrough

American  

[breyk-throo] / ˈbreɪkˌθru /

noun

• breakthroughs
  plural

1. a military movement or advance all the way through and beyond an enemy's frontline defense.

2. an act or instance of removing or surpassing an obstruction or restriction; the overcoming of a stalemate.

   The president reported a breakthrough in the treaty negotiations.

3. any significant or sudden advance, development, achievement, or increase, as in scientific knowledge or diplomacy, that removes a barrier to progress.

   The jet engine was a major breakthrough in air transport.

4. Medicine/Medical. an infection, disease, disorder, or condition that occurs in an individual despite their having received a vaccine, medication, or treatment.

   Covid breakthroughs are usually less severe than infections in unvaccinated people, indicating that the vaccine is still doing its job of combating the virus.

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adjective

1. constituting a breakthrough: Critics called it a breakthrough film.

   Their products are engineered with breakthrough technology.

   Critics called it a breakthrough film.

2. Medicine/Medical. relating to or being an infection, disease, disorder, or condition that occurs as a breakthrough: She experienced disabling breakthrough pain despite the high dose of painkillers she was taking.

   In the original vaccine trial, 89% of breakthrough infections were with a particular family of virus strains.

   She experienced disabling breakthrough pain despite the high dose of painkillers she was taking.

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• breakthroughs
  plural

Etymology

Origin of breakthrough

First recorded in 1915–20; noun use of verb phrase break through

Explanation

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."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

breakthrough breakthroughs

The apparent breakthrough couldn’t have come at a better time.

From Salon ● Aug. 15, 2026

Sovaldi was a truly amazing breakthrough, and we want the biotech and pharmacy industry to continue its impressive track record of pursuing innovative new therapeutics.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 13, 2026

This was widely viewed as a major potential breakthrough in the conflict.

From BBC ● Aug. 10, 2026

Success would show how a breakthrough originating in fundamental quantum physics could lead directly to improvements in next-generation solar energy technology.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 8, 2026

Livingston’s breakthrough did not conclude the effort to improve the eleven-inch cyclotrons performance.

From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik

Over the past decade, that balancing act has produced life-changing medical breakthroughs, but also historically high healthcare costs.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 13, 2026

Potential scientific breakthroughs could be stymied: in medicine, agriculture and even climate change adaptation.

From BBC ● Aug. 8, 2026

For scientists like Cohen, these molecules are an exciting area of research that could reap significant health breakthroughs.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 6, 2026

Unlike many other recent AI-assisted breakthroughs, the counterexample itself is remarkably simple.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 6, 2026

Huygens’s early work was chiefly in the field of mathematics, where he made improvements in existing techniques and developed his own skills, without making any major new breakthroughs.

From "The Scientists" by John Gribbin

Related Words

• boost
• development
• discovery
• finding
• gain
• hike
• improvement
• leap
• progress