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:
Mindgard alerted Moonshot to the jailbreak in an email on 27 July, following up about a week later.
From BBC ● Sep. 29, 2026
The protections include additional training to refuse requests to perform malicious actions or fall victim to jailbreak prompts to sidestep those limits.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 1, 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 disagree that the finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people," the company said.
From Barron's ● 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
While jailbreaks are complex processes that can take a lot of time and determination some experts fear hackers and other bad actors could try to use them to cause harm.
From BBC ● Sep. 29, 2026
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
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
Officials confiscated house keys to prevent isolation jailbreaks, while the empty homes of those put into centralized quarantine have been turned upside down as they are doused with disinfectant.
From Washington Post ● May 13, 2022
He was also known, perhaps most famously, for his jailbreaks and escapes.
From New York Times ● Nov. 11, 2018
"The cyber defence capabilities will enable enterprises and governments to defend themselves against threat actors that are jailbreaking closed models to perform cyberattacks," Mistral's Chief Scientist Guillaume Lample said in the statement.
From Barron's ● Oct. 6, 2026
It arose during a process called "jailbreaking", where researchers use a series of complex instructions to see if AI tools ignore guardrails - which Mindgard said should have stopped Kimi from discussing concerning topics.
From BBC ● Sep. 29, 2026
Anthropic said it thinks the government became aware of a method of so-called jailbreaking before Friday’s action.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 13, 2026
Even then, it’s difficult to prove who is jailbreaking devices or bringing in hot spots if they aren’t caught in the act.
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
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
In one instance at the Everglades Correctional Institution in 2021, I watched prison officials seize more than 200 jailbroken tablets in one day.
From Slate ● Dec. 14, 2023
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
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