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Fail   /feɪl/   Listen
Fail

verb
(past & past part. failed; pres. part. failing)
1.
Fail to do something; leave something undone.  Synonym: neglect.  "The secretary failed to call the customer and the company lost the account"
2.
Be unsuccessful.  Synonyms: go wrong, miscarry.  "The attempt to rescue the hostages failed miserably"
3.
Disappoint, prove undependable to; abandon, forsake.  Synonym: betray.  "His strength finally failed him" , "His children failed him in the crisis"
4.
Stop operating or functioning.  Synonyms: break, break down, conk out, die, give out, give way, go, go bad.  "The car died on the road" , "The bus we travelled in broke down on the way to town" , "The coffee maker broke" , "The engine failed on the way to town" , "Her eyesight went after the accident"
5.
Be unable.
6.
Judge unacceptable.
7.
Fail to get a passing grade.  Synonyms: bomb, flunk, flush it.  "Did I fail the test?"
8.
Fall short in what is expected.  "We must not fail his obligation to the victims of the Holocaust"
9.
Become bankrupt or insolvent; fail financially and close.  "A number of banks failed that year"
10.
Prove insufficient.  Synonyms: give out, run out.
11.
Get worse.



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WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Fail" Quotes from Famous Books



... with which they may most naturally be compared, belong to a ruder state of society, which gave to the poetry less dignity and elevation than belong to a people who, like the Spanish, were for centuries engaged in a contest ennobled by a sense of religion and loyalty, and which could not fail to raise the minds of those engaged in it far above the atmosphere that settled around the bloody feuds of rival barons, or the gross maraudings of border warfare. The great Castilian heroes, the Cid, Bernardo del Carpio, and Pelayo, are even now an essential portion of the faith ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... advice from me, insomuch as you have a mother, whom I have ever found most sagacious, and entirely in conformity with my own opinions and wishes, and whom I have never found faulty; with such a preceptress, you cannot fail to be properly instructed. Do not account it singular that I, with no tie of blood to you, am interested in you; for, being the child of one who is so closely allied to me, I am necessarily concerned in what concerns ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... likes me, which very possibly she may fail to do, I shall have a few questions to ask you before I settle down to my duties. Will you see that an opportunity is given ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green

... moment of her meeting with Baroudi was so near she felt as if she could not bear even another second's delay. How she was going to escape from her husband she did not know. But she did not worry about that. She could always manage Nigel somehow, and she would not fail for the first ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... did not presume to vie with Lord Mowbray as a man of gallantry; but I should conceive that the same precepts, and the same arts, which ensured success with women of a certain class, might utterly fail with women of different habits and tastes. If the question were how to win such and such an actress (naming one who had sacrificed her reputation for Mowbray, and another, for whom he was sacrificing his fortune), I should, I said, implicitly follow his advice; but that, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth


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