broken record

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Noun

broken record (plural broken records)

1. (idiomatic) Someone or something that constantly repeats itself, causing annoyance.

   Synonym: stuck record

   • 1975, George Wickes, “A Natalie Barney Garland”, in The Paris Review‎, number 61:

     She repeated several little anecdotes or remarks about Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound and George Antheil. Disconcertingly she kept asking me if I knew them, if I’d been in Paris then, what had happened to them and others, most of them dead. Her mind wandered, repeating itself like a broken record.

   • 1994, Deb M., Stepping Stones to Recovery from Codependency, Aaron Anderson quoting Ken Fisher, The Making of a Market Guru: Forbes Presents 25 Years of Ken Fisher

     In spite of reading all the materials on the Steps, talking to my sponsor, sharing at meetings, I felt like a broken record.

   • 2005, Mike Philbin, The Best of Him+chim+her:

     She was a broken record forever singing the same song, a lame, blind in one eye, fucked too often by life's injustice sufferer of the flesh.

   to sound like a broken record

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see broken,‎ record.

Related terms

• change the record

Translations

Someone or something that constantly repeats itself, causing annoyance

Finnish: rikkinäinen levy, jankuttaja (fi) French: disque rayé (fr) m German: Mensch mit einem Sprung in der Platte m Greek: κόλλησε η βελόνα (kóllise i velóna) Italian: disco rotto m Macedonian: расипана плоча f (rasipana ploča) Polish: zdarta płyta f Portuguese: disco riscado m, disco quebrado m Russian: зае́зженная пласти́нка f (zajézžennaja plastínka) Scottish Gaelic: pìobaire an aon phuirt m (literally “one-tune piper”) Slovak: pokazený gramofón, obohratá platňa Spanish: disco rayado m Tagalog: sirang plaka Thai: แผ่นเสียงตกร่อง (th) Turkish: bozuk plak gibi (tr) (literally “like a broken record”), kırık plak gibi (tr) (literally “like a broken record”)