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

Wordless, Drake walks throughout the shop, at one point measuring a block of ice, before landing in the break room. —Jeff Ihaza, Rolling Stone, 23 Sep. 2025

Church leaders packed up the food and put it into break rooms in each school in Lebanon. —Nashville Tennessean, 18 Sep. 2025

But when the vision quest fizzles out, many organizations are left with a colorful statement on their break room walls. —Chip Bell, Forbes.com, 14 Sep. 2025

But too many solutions are still dreamed up in conference rooms, far away from the break rooms and shop floors where those problems live. —Silvija Martincevic, Fortune, 23 Aug. 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1956, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for break room

• assume
• backroom
• ballroom
• barroom
• bathroom
• bedroom
• boardroom
• bridegroom
• classroom
• cloakroom
• consume
• costume