Vault seed record

Break the ice meaning

At the start of the workshop, the host told a quick story to break the ice.

Classification

reviewed-seedapprovedvocabulary-collocation-depthidiom-meaning-matchchoice-distractorB1Naturalness

Provenance

Kind: human-authored

Source: production-seed-expansion

Batch: production-seed-batch-002

Reviewer: content-lead

Updated: 2026-05-20

Instruction and answer

Instruction

Choose what the expression means.

Correct answer

make people feel more relaxed

Explanation

To break the ice means to make a social situation less awkward. It is common in meetings, workshops, and first conversations.

Product use

Surfaces

testdailyfriend-challenge

Source languages

globalrues

Difficulty

medium

Conversion hook

Gives the user a quick native-expression win or miss.

Review payload

Review notes

Useful everyday idiom seed.

Media prompt

No media prompt attached.

Assets

collocation-pairshumor-emotion-pragmatics

Source traps

none

Tags

idiomsworkshopsocial-english

Usage

Tests: idioms-expressions, native-sounding, speaking-confidence

Funnels: none

Challenges: break-the-ice

{
  "type": "single-choice",
  "correctOptionId": "relax",
  "options": [
    {
      "id": "relax",
      "label": "make people feel more relaxed",
      "rationale": "Break the ice means reduce awkwardness at the start."
    },
    {
      "id": "argue",
      "label": "start an argument",
      "rationale": "The expression is social, not hostile."
    },
    {
      "id": "cancel",
      "label": "cancel the meeting",
      "rationale": "Nothing is being cancelled."
    },
    {
      "id": "rush",
      "label": "finish quickly",
      "rationale": "Speed is not the meaning."
    }
  ]
}