Dear Slangman, I need your advice. Here's the story that just broke today. Well, this morning I had a real breakthrough, so let me break it down for you. Today I finally broke up with my boyfriend because he had some really annoying characteristics. For example, he's always broke. He breaks our dates. And he always breaks into conversations that don't involve him. I finally broke down and broke up with him, which made him break down and then break out in hives. I didn't mean to break his heart, but give me a break -- he's so rude! I know I should be breaking out the champagne now -- now that I broke it off. But I feel guilty and my voice breaks every time I talk about it. Do you think I did the right thing? So within that one letter, we have about ten different uses of the word break. And what's interesting to Americans, we don't even realize how many times we use these two and three word phrasal verbs. If somebody's fighting, we'll say 'Hey, break it up.' Well, that just simply means stop it. So let's go through here and kind of explore some of these words. Here's a story that just broke today. We hear this on the news all the time. A breaking story. It means a story that just became known, that just happened. So we hear that a lot. 'This morning I had a breakthrough. A breakthrough means a revelation, something I wasn't aware of, and now I had a breakthrough, a sudden understanding.