fault
Other forms: faults; faulted; faulting
A fault is an error caused by ignorance, bad judgment or inattention. If you're a passenger, it might be your fault that your friend missed the exit, if you were supposed to be watching for it, not sleeping.
Fault can mean "blame" — as a noun or verb. If you say, "It's my fault," you accept the blame. Well, they can't fault you for telling the truth, at least. A fault can be a shortcoming — everyone has faults because no one is perfect — or a crack in the earth's crust, like the San Andreas Fault. In sports like tennis, a fault is an illegal hit of the ball, usually when it lands outside the playing area.
Definitions of fault
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an imperfection in an object or machine
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types:
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blister
a flaw on a surface resulting when an applied substance does not adhere (as an air bubble in a coat of paint)
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bug, glitch
a fault or defect in a computer program, system, or machine
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hole
a fault
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type of:
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imperfection, imperfectness
the state or an instance of being imperfect
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blister
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the quality of being inadequate or falling short of perfection
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a wrong action attributable to bad judgment or ignorance or inattention“I could understand his English in spite of his grammatical faults”
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types:
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blot, smear, smirch, spot, stain
an act that brings discredit to the person who does it
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confusion, mix-up
a mistake that results from taking one thing to be another
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incursion
the mistake of incurring liability or blame
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miscalculation, misestimation, misreckoning
a mistake in calculating
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distortion
the mistake of misrepresenting the facts
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miscue, parapraxis, slip, slip-up
a minor inadvertent mistake usually observed in speech or writing or in small accidents or memory lapses etc.
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offside
(sport) the mistake of occupying an illegal position on the playing field (in football, soccer, ice hockey, field hockey, etc.)
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lapse, oversight
a mistake resulting from inattention
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omission, skip
a mistake resulting from neglect
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bloomer, blooper, blunder, boo-boo, botch, bungle, flub, foul-up, pratfall
an embarrassing mistake
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balls-up, ballup, cockup, mess-up
something badly botched or muddled
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betise, folly, foolishness, imbecility, stupidity
a stupid mistake
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renege, revoke
the mistake of not following suit when able to do so
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failure
an unexpected omission
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bobble
the momentary juggling of a batted or thrown baseball
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backfire, boomerang
a miscalculation that recoils on its maker
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rounding, rounding error
(mathematics) a miscalculation that results from rounding off numbers to a convenient number of decimals
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truncation error
(mathematics) a miscalculation that results from cutting off a numerical calculation before it is finished
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Freudian slip
a slip-up that (according to Sigmund Freud) results from the operation of unconscious wishes or conflicts and can reveal unconscious processes in normal healthy individuals
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spectacle
a blunder that makes you look ridiculous; used in the phrase `make a spectacle of' yourself
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bull
a serious and ludicrous blunder
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fumble, muff
(sports) dropping the ball
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fluff
a blunder (especially an actor's forgetting the lines)
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faux pas, gaffe, gaucherie, slip, solecism
a socially awkward or tactless act
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howler
a glaring blunder
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clanger
a conspicuous mistake whose effects seem to reverberate
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misstep, stumble, trip, trip-up
an unintentional but embarrassing blunder
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type of:
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nonaccomplishment, nonachievement
an act that does not achieve its intended goal
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(electronics) equipment failure attributable to some defect in a circuit (loose connection or insulation failure or short circuit etc.)“it took much longer to find the fault than to fix it”
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type of:
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breakdown, equipment failure
a cessation of normal operation
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breakdown, equipment failure
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(sports) a serve that is illegal (e.g., that lands outside the prescribed area)“he served too many double faults”
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types:
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double fault
(tennis) two successive faults in serving resulting in the loss of the point
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footfault
a fault that occurs when the server in tennis fails to keep both feet behind the baseline
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double fault
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responsibility for a bad situation or event“it was John's fault”
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type of:
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responsibility, responsibleness
a form of trustworthiness; the trait of being answerable to someone for something or being responsible for one's conduct
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responsibility, responsibleness
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put or pin the blame on
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(geology) a crack in the earth's crust resulting from the displacement of one side with respect to the other“they built it right over a geological fault”
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synonyms:
break, faulting, fracture, geological fault, shift
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examples:
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Denali Fault
a major open geological fault in Alaska
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San Andreas Fault
a major geological fault in California; runs from San Diego to San Francisco; the source of serious earthquakes
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types:
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inclined fault
a geological fault in which one side is above the other
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strike-slip fault
a geological fault in which one of the adjacent surfaces appears to have moved horizontally
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common fault, gravity fault, normal fault
an inclined fault in which the hanging wall appears to have slipped downward relative to the footwall
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overthrust fault, reverse fault, thrust fault
a geological fault in which the upper side appears to have been pushed upward by compression
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Denali Fault
Pronunciation
US
/fɔlt/
UK
/fɔlt/
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