- 1（疾病、戰爭、暴力的）爆發、突然發生；如流感疫情爆發、戰爭爆發。
The sudden start of something bad that then spreads. You will meet it most with disease — an outbreak of flu, a outbreak, an outbreak at a school — and with violence: an outbreak of fighting, an outbreak of war. The two ideas behind the word are *sudden* and *bad*. Nobody says 'an outbreak of happiness' unless they are joking, and English speakers do joke that way sometimes ('a rare outbreak of common sense'), which works precisely because the word normally carries trouble. It is a countable noun and takes 'of': an outbreak of . In news writing it can also mean the beginning of a war as a moment in time — 'at the outbreak of the Second World War' means when the war began. Weather reports use it for scattered bad weather: 'outbreaks of rain'. Note that it names the event, not the illness itself, so you treat the patients but you contain the outbreak.
From the word’s history
From Middle English outbreken, from Old English ūtābrecan 'to break out'; out + break.
源自古英文 ūtābrecan「爆發」，就是 out 加 break。
組成out- + break, from an older English verb meaning 'to break out'. Think of something that was held in — a disease inside a few people, anger inside a crowd — breaking through and getting out. The noun is really the phrasal verb 'break out' turned around and made into a thing.
原始詞典資料5 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
outbreaknoun/ˈaʊtbɹeɪk/
- 1
An eruption; the sudden appearance of a rash, disease, etc.
- Any epidemic outbreak causes understandable panic.
- In a December 5 post on X, CDC Acting Director Jim O’Neill said there was no epidemiological evidence linking the Texas outbreak and the ongoing cases in South Carolina. A U.S. Health and Human Services spokesman confirmed that the CDC has found no epidemiological evidence linking ongoing outbreaks to Texas, but said many recent U.S. cases share the same genotype and have no known source of infection, “which could indicate ongoing domestic transmission.”
- 2
A sudden increase.
- There has been an outbreak of vandalism at the school.
- One such investigation described how kindness can be contagious. It was sparked by reports of an outbreak of kindness on a cold December morning in 2012.
- 3
An outburst or sudden eruption, especially of violence and mischief.
- There has been an outbreak of broken windows in the street.
- 4
Synonym of breakout (“escape from prison”).
outbreakverb/ˈaʊtbɹeɪk/
- 1
To burst out or break forth.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。