break room

noun

variants or less commonly breakroom

ˈbrāk-ˌrüm 

-ˌru̇m

plural break rooms also breakrooms

: a room in a workplace where an employee can go for a short period of rest or refreshment

At lunchtime I ordered pizza for the staff and we all ate together, somewhat stiffly, in the break room.

—Heidi Julavits

Bumping into each other in the breakroom or chatting in the elevator sometimes leads to unexpected collaboration and creative solutions.

—Elizabeth Baskin

Examples of break room in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

But this phenomenon doesn’t lend itself easily to statistical analysis, either: The importance of holidays, for instance, can’t quite stand in for the very individual motivations that define the anecdotes shared in hospital break rooms or around a dinner table. —Sunita Puri, The Atlantic, 5 Oct. 2024

During this time of year, most of the break room and Slack conversations at the office have shifted to Fantasy Football, with everyone talking about how their fantasy teams and favorite NFL teams are performing. —Jeff Fromm, Forbes, 11 Oct. 2024

The 12,000-square-foot horse barn, built in 2000, holds the title instead with a manager’s office, a show room, a break room, a feed room, a wash rack, and a veterinary suite in addition to its 18 stalls. —Demetrius Simms, Robb Report, 23 Sep. 2024

The novelist Sigrid Nunez also worked there, just prior to the publication of her first book, and the two became friends, chatting in the break room and on trains home. —Elena Saavedra Buckley, The New Yorker, 19 Sep. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1956, in the meaning defined above