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

Blue Note Records released her breakthrough solo LP, 1993’s “Blue Light ‘Til Dawn,” a mix of originals and covers of work by blues pioneer Robert Johnson and folk singers Van Morrison and Joni Mitchell.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 2, 2026

A major breakthrough came from museomics, the use of DNA sequencing on historical museum specimens.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 30, 2026

Oil prices edged down but remain in danger of spiking further as investors await a breakthrough in efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to tanker and cargo traffic.

From Barron's ● Aug. 28, 2026

The drug, daraxonrasib, sold under the brand name Rasonque and manufactured by Revolution Medicines, appears to be a breakthrough in treating one of the world's deadliest cancers.

From BBC ● Aug. 26, 2026

I could tell she thought we were experiencing the kind of thing she would probably call a breakthrough.

From "The Thing About Jellyfish" by Ali Benjamin

Yet, "very few recent G20 meetings have produced significant breakthroughs, and it's unlikely that this one will," said James Lindsay of the Council on Foreign Relations think tank.

From Barron's ● Sep. 1, 2026

On the positive side, we’ve all heard the hype from Silicon Valley that we’re gonna have medical breakthroughs.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 27, 2026

Today, breakthroughs across multiple disciplines are occurring in parallel.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 26, 2026

“Demis chose to step into a new role at Google and is focusing his efforts more strategically on scientific breakthroughs and shaping the future of AGI,” the spokesperson said.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026

A girl named Rose says, “Well, because of her cells the medical field had major breakthroughs, like the polio vaccine, chemotherapy, and the creation of drugs that treat leukemia, influenza, and Parkinson’s disease.”

From "Watch Us Rise" by Renée Watson and Ellen Hagan

Related Words

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