fail: signification et définitions

To prove deficient or lacking; perform ineffectively or inadequately: failed to fulfill their promises; failed in their attempt to reach the summit.

To be unsuccessful: an experiment that failed.

To receive an academic grade below the acceptable minimum.

To prove insufficient in quantity or duration; give out: The water supply failed during the drought.

To decline, as in strength or effectiveness: The light began to fail.

To cease functioning properly: The engine failed.

To give way or be made otherwise useless as a result of excessive strain: The rusted girders failed and caused the bridge to collapse.

To become bankrupt or insolvent: Their business failed during the last recession.

To disappoint or prove undependable to: Our sentries failed us.

To abandon; forsake: His strength failed him.

To omit to perform (an expected duty, for example): "We must . . . hold . . . those horrors up to the light of justice. Otherwise we would fail our inescapable obligation to the victims of Nazism: to remember” ( Anthony Lewis).

To leave undone; neglect: failed to wash the dishes.

To receive an academic grade below the acceptable minimum in (a course, for example): failed algebra twice.

To give such a grade of failure to (a student): failed me in algebra.

Failure to deliver securities to a purchaser within a specified time.

Failure to receive the proceeds of a transaction, as in the sale of stock or securities, by a specified date.

without fail With no chance of failure: Be here at noon without fail.