English · Idiom Candidate

break ranks

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

To disobey or disagree with a group's opinion or decision

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

không tuân thủ hoặc không đồng ý với quyết định của nhóm

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: leave a line of people

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

Where was the breakthrough to come from?

It was only with ‘ the Troubles’, from 1968, that unionists broke ranks.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “break ranks” mean?

To disobey or disagree with a group's opinion or decision Literally: leave a line of people

Is “break ranks” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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