failing

Pluralfailings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of fail.

   The engine is failing under the heavy load.

   Failing to plan often leads to wasted effort.

   Note

   One -ing form does three jobs. In a progressive it is pure verb (the engine is failing). As a gerund it keeps the verb's taste for an infinitive, so failing to plan, not failing planning. Before a noun it turns adjectival, as in the "failing light" of H. A. Vallance's "Kyle of Lochalsh Revisited" (Railway Magazine, 1951). There the light is not unsuccessful; it is running short.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A weakness or defect, especially a shortcoming in a person's character or behavior.

   Impatience was her chief failing as a manager.

   The report listed several failings in the safety system.

   Similarshortcoming, weakness, flaw, fault

   Oppositestrength, virtue, merit, forte

   Note

   A personal flaw is usually owned and ranked: his worst failing, her chief failing. In the plural the word moves into official prose, where failings are lapses of duty rather than temperament. In 2023 Network Rail pleaded guilty to "a series of failings," one of them "failing to tell the driver." There the verb form sits right beside the noun.

3. 3
   preposition

   Used before a noun to mean 'in the absence of' or 'if the thing just mentioned is not possible.'

   Failing agreement at the meeting, the dispute will go to arbitration.

   She planned to fly home, or failing that, to drive overnight.

   Similarwithout, absent

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