jailbreak
Americannoun
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jailbreaks
plural
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an escape from prison, especially by forcible means.
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Digital Technology.
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an instance of gaining access to the operating system of a smartphone, tablet, etc., especially one manufactured by Apple.
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a software program or piece of hardware used to accomplish this.
You'll need a jailbreak to run unauthorized apps.
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an instance of circumventing restrictions on access to any computer system or digital content.
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verb (used with object)
verb (used without object)
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of jailbreak
Explanation
A jailbreak is a prison escape. Whenever someone who's incarcerated or locked up manages to get out illegally, that's a jailbreak. Prison security, from armed guards to razor wire, locks, and security cameras, means that jailbreaks don't happen often. These days it's more common to use this word to talk about computers or smartphones. When a hacker performs a jailbreak on one of these devices, she bypasses the manufacturer's restrictions so that even unauthorized software can be installed.
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.
See Examples For:
"However, we disagree that the finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people."
From BBC ● Jul. 1, 2026
This is what the industry calls a jailbreak.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 16, 2026
“We disagree that the finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people,” Anthropic said in its website post.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 14, 2026
“We suspect that perfect jailbreak resistance is not currently possible for any model provider,” that blog post noted.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 13, 2026
Whenever we get a jailbreak, Paul, aka Thing Three, streaks around the gym with both arms up yelling “Blue Team! It’s what’s for breakfast!”
From "Liar & Spy" by Rebecca Stead
We have only one path forward: build a more capable American open-weight alternative that withstands attempted jailbreaks.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 26, 2026
But researchers were able to find "universal jailbreaks" - or workarounds - for all the models studied which would allow them to dodge these protections.
From BBC ● Dec. 18, 2025
It’s whether, at the checkout aisle in Walmart, there’s a hang rack with a little 99-cent device that jailbreaks your iPhone and installs another app store.
From Slate ● Oct. 13, 2025
We're now paying $2,000,000 for remote iOS jailbreaks, $1,000,000 for WhatsApp/iMessage/SMS/MMS RCEs, and $500,000 for Chrome RCEs.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 8, 2019
There are more than 20 red meat slaughter houses in New York City, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, and jailbreaks do happen.
From New York Times ● Mar. 1, 2017
The Army’s jailbreaking initiative means the service can now get real-time telemetry data from Abrams tanks and Stryker vehicles, said Dave Paddock, the president of General Dynamics Land Systems.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 2, 2026
Although most people use their tablets for what they are intended—communication, education, and entertainment—prison officials and opponents of tech inside prison have used jailbreaking as an excuse to terminate personal electronic devices altogether.
From Slate ● Dec. 14, 2023
Some people use jailbreaking for sketchy purposes, yet others deploy it to elicit more creative answers.
From Scientific American ● May 11, 2023
But as jailbreaking began to decline in popularity —and iOS became a ubiquitous platform with hundreds of millions of users — the enterprise program has emerged as a viable alternative.
From The Verge ● Feb. 20, 2019
As always with jailbreaking, you proceed at your own risk.
From Forbes ● Jun. 27, 2014
In response, some users who were trying to find ways to mask this data from the app rooted or jailbroke their phones to fake GPS sensor data—which actually put them at even greater risk.
From Slate ● Feb. 28, 2018
This time, Brown jailbroke Stapel’s memoir by translating it into English and posting the document on a public website.
From Science Magazine ● Feb. 14, 2018
A model can’t be jailbroken into revealing dangerous knowledge if its weights haven’t encoded that knowledge.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 26, 2026
Owning a streaming device is not illegal in the UK, even if it has been "jailbroken", where the built-in software restrictions have been removed to install unauthorised apps.
From BBC ● May 23, 2026
Fast forward a few years, and I was a stereotypical techy teen with a jailbroken and modded iPod Touch fourth gen.
From The Verge ● May 14, 2022
This is especially true if your phone is jailbroken.
From Fox News ● Aug. 7, 2021
I used to mess with this sort of stuff back when I had a jailbroken iPhone.
From Slate ● Mar. 5, 2014
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.
