breakthrough

American  

[brayk-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

I've Seen It is the closing track of Dean's breakthrough album, which was released in September 2025.

From BBC ● Oct. 2, 2026

Last Wednesday, the head of an AI tech company casually announced, in a long-winded post on X, a discovery that, if true, would represent a major breakthrough in biomedical research.

From Salon ● Sep. 30, 2026

In the four years since ChatGPT’s breakthrough, generative-text bots have become an unavoidable, discomfiting presence in our most intimate relations—friendships, family ties, romantic prospects.

From Slate ● Sep. 29, 2026

What’s certain, however, is after last season’s breakthrough, the Ducks won’t be sneaking up on anyone.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 27, 2026

The media tend to present each new procedure as though it represented a breakthrough and therapeutic triumph, instead of the makeshift that it really is.

From "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas

"A new generation of deep-science startups is translating breakthroughs into products and transforming fields such as life sciences, space, robotics and clean energy."

From Barron's ● Sep. 29, 2026

Will one country gain such significant tech advantages from breakthroughs in superintelligence or quantum computing that it can overturn the economic and military balance of power—and if so, which one?

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 28, 2026

"For anybody who studies pathogenic bacteria, it's always in the back of our minds that antibiotics are one of the most important breakthroughs in medicine in the 20th century," Barber said.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 28, 2026

But there were no joint statements and few major breakthroughs.

From BBC ● Sep. 28, 2026

No kind of crazy breakthroughs, just variations on a theme: pigs with brain maps that resemble St. Louis, my couple for Noelle joined by the sweeping bridge, a family of metropolises.

From "It’s Kind of a Funny Story" by Ned Vizzini

Related Words

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