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
The vulnerabilities don’t represent a full so-called jailbreak, a point of view shared by some security researchers familiar with Amazon’s research.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 14, 2026
Researchers at Amazon.com Inc. had conducted jailbreak research that revealed some vulnerabilities in Anthropic’s model, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
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
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
Such is Rédoine Faïd's reputation for jailbreaks, French authorities have deployed an elite unit of gendarmes to stop him absconding on his way to and from the court.
From BBC ● Sep. 5, 2023
But it also bore echoes of the past: Before they seized territory and declared their own caliphate, many members of what became the Islamic State group were freed from prison through jailbreaks.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 23, 2022
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
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
Plus: Formerly incarcerated journalist Ryan M. Moser takes a close look at the prison black market dedicated to jailbreaking tablets, and the bigger problem it sheds light on.
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
No one is ready to detect hardware attacks In some ways, the attacks borrow techniques from jailbreaking, breaking the chain of trust between the hardware and the software instead of attacking the software itself.
From The Verge ● Oct. 4, 2018
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
Hackers have jailbroken the PS4 with a new kernel exploit, according to Wololo.net, a website that covers jailbreaking news, seemingly opening the door for people to run things like homebrew apps on Sony’s last-gen consoles.
From The Verge ● Dec. 14, 2021
This is especially true if your phone is jailbroken.
From Fox News ● Aug. 7, 2021
Symantec also found seven new threats aimed at Apple's mobile iOS platform, with jailbroken devices - those that have been unlocked - being particularly vulnerable.
From BBC ● Dec. 11, 2015
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.
