breakdown

A failure, particularly one which is mechanical in nature.

Whenever he was behind the wheel, he would panic at the first sign of a breakdown.

He declared that these drastic steps would undoubtedly inconvenience a good many people, but the alternative was bankruptcy of the Ulster Transport Authority and the breakdown of public transport services.

A failure, particularly one which is mechanical in nature.

Something, such as a vehicle, that has experienced a mechanical failure.

We saw a breakdown by the side of the road.

Separation of a thing into components; decomposition, fragmentation; (countable) an instance of this.

Looking at the breakdown of the budget, I see a few items we could cut.

The railways' monopoly had meant that accountancy and record-keeping had been limited to global accounts. In other words, there were only really headline numbers, with little useful breakdown by routes or traffic type.

Separation of a thing into components; decomposition, fragmentation; (countable) an instance of this.