the.com/breaking point

means The exact point of stress or pressure at which something — a material, a person, a situation — gives way and fails.

from A straightforward 19th-century engineering term, born in workshops and labs where materials were literally tested to failure: metal rods, ropes, beams, pulled or loaded until they snapped. That measured stress became the 'breaking point' of the material. From there the phrase migrated into everyday language by the early-to-mid 1900s, applied to nerves, patience, and relationships — the moment of mechanical failure reimagined as a moment of human collapse.