broken line
Americannoun
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a discontinuous line or series of line segments, as a series of dashes, or a figure made up of line segments meeting at oblique angles.
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a highway marking consisting of a series of disconnected line segments painted between lanes of a roadway, indicating that crossing from one to the other is permissible.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
These five nations that have recently experienced military coups form a broken line that stretches across the wide bulge of Africa, from Guinea on the west coast to Sudan in the east.
From New York Times • Jan. 28, 2022
The broken line along 15 Mile Road caused a football field-sized sinkhole on Christmas Eve, led to condemnation of three houses and threatened to dump raw sewage into thousands of basements through the broken pipe.
From Washington Times • Sep. 26, 2017
Or it can be used almost dry to make a broken line that scrapes along textured paper.
From The Guardian • Feb. 5, 2011
The other is a tidy broken line near the top of the canvas, hinting at a level of consciousness that won't be breached by the purposeful creature below.
From Seattle Times • Dec. 30, 2010
He splices a broken line, or pokes a bird’s nest off a boom, or elevates an antenna on struts.
From "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
