A moment or situation where something is likely to break, fail, or change dramatically; in tennis, a situation where the receiving player could win the server's game.
From 'break' + 'point' (a precise location or moment). The term emerged in 20th-century technical jargon, especially in programming (where it's a debugging tool) and sports.
In programming, a 'breakpoint' is where you pause code to examine what's happening—programmers literally use the breaking metaphor to stop execution and investigate. It's one of computing's most useful metaphors made literal.
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