'Breaking up' means ending a romantic relationship, or a group or thing coming apart. It can also describe a weak phone call where the audio cuts in and out. The mood is often painful, awkward, or annoying.
Some springs are acid, as at Lyncestus and in Italy in the Velian country, at Teano in Campania, and in many other places. These when used in drinks have the power of breaking up stones in the bladder, which form in the human body. Vitruvius
The habit of breaking up one's colour to make it brilliant dates from further back than Impressionism-Couture advocates it in a little book called 'Causeries d'Atelier' written about 1860-it is part of the technique of Impressionism but used for quite a different reason. John Singer Sargent
They tried to say that being gay is a sin, and I said that adultery is a sin. Adultery is responsible for breaking up more marriages, but do we put that in the Constitution? It's absurd. Al Sharpton
I mean that the time where we need International agreement more than ever on the environment and the rest, poverty we are breaking up our International Institutions and the rule of law and Tony Blair is part of it. Clare Short
In Italy, on the breaking up of the Roman Empire, society might be said to be resolved into its original elements, - into hostile atoms, whose only movement was that of mutual repulsion. Edward Everett
The fact of it is that all of us agreed to save 6d. in the Income Tax by breaking up the Army in peace-time and not having it prepared when war broke out...I will never be a party to it again. Ernest Bevin