jailbreak

1 of 2

noun

jail·​break ˈjāl-ˌbrāk 

: a forcible escape from jail

jailbreak

2 of 2

verb

jailbroke ˈjāl-ˌbrōk  ; jailbreaking; jailbreaks

transitive verb

: to remove built-in limitations from (an electronic device, such as a cell phone)

I'm not trying to be overly snarky here, but for … in-house app distribution, I see no need or advantage to jailbreaking an iOS device.

—John Welch

Last week we learned you can jailbreak every current model of Kindle.

—Thorin Klosowski

Apple makes it nearly impossible for the average user to download apps from anywhere else unless you jailbreak your phone.

—Peter Wells

Examples of jailbreak in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Noun

Unfortunately, jailbreaks don’t really fly under the radar, and the duo find themselves being hunted by the FBI. —Aramide Tinubu, Variety, 18 June 2026

What followed were several calls between Amodei and senior administration officials during which Amodei argued the security bypass found by Amazon was narrow rather than a full jailbreak of the model’s safeguards. —Jim Edwards, Fortune, 15 June 2026

Verb

Anthropic says whatever jailbreak the government found is not serious enough to warrant such a drastic action. —Reed Albergotti, semafor.com, 13 June 2026

People are able to jailbreak the models and do all sorts of things with them. —Brian Barrett, Wired News, 30 Apr. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

Noun

1910, in the meaning defined above

Verb

2007, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for jailbreak

• awake
• backache
• beefsteak
• betake
• cheesecake
• cupcake
• daybreak
• earthquake
• forsake
• gouache
• handshake
• headache

Kids Definition

jailbreak

noun

jail·​break -ˌbrāk 

: an escape from jail by use of force