fault
Pluralfaults (some meanings)
Pluralfaults (some meanings)
Formsfaults, faulting, faulted
- 1Responsibility or blame for a wrongful or harmful event.
The committee concluded the fault lay with the contractor, not the architect.
Drivers often dispute who is at fault after a minor collision.
UsageUsually tied to a person: it's my fault, whose fault it was, someone is at fault, the fault lies with someone.
Similarblame, responsibility, liability, culpability
Oppositecredit
Note
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (1599) gives it its most famous line: 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves.' Here it is typically uncountable and tied to a person: it's my fault, whose fault it was, someone is at fault, the fault lies with someone. It names blame, not a defect in a thing.
- 2A defect or weak point that makes something imperfect or likely to fail, such as a flaw in a machine, a design or a material.
A design fault caused thousands of the new laptops to overheat within months of sale.
Whatever its faults, the report remains the most thorough study of the problem so far.
UsageClose to flaw and defect; common phrases are a design fault and whatever its faults.
- 3A fracture in rock along which the two sides have moved relative to each other.
Movement along the fault triggered a magnitude six earthquake.
The region's many faults make it prone to frequent seismic activity.
Similarfracture
Note
Geologists use fault for a break along which rock has shifted. Faults are mapped structures, such as the San Andreas Fault and nearby fault systems. Movement along a fault may cause an earthquake. Several technical senses share the idea of broken continuity.
- 4To criticize or blame someone or something for a mistake or shortcoming.
Critics faulted the report for ignoring key pieces of evidence.
No one could fault her commitment to the project.
UsageUsually fault someone for something; in the negative it often praises or excuses: no one could fault her effort. Compare find fault with.
- 5A weakness or bad point in someone's character, usually a minor one that falls short of a vice.
Impatience was his worst fault, and he admitted it freely.
Generosity became a fault once people learned they could take advantage of him.
UsageUsually milder than vice; common phrases include we all have our faults and his worst fault.
Note
Faults of character are the everyday kind: impatience, pride, a quick temper. Even a good quality can count as one in excess, as when generosity leaves someone easy to exploit. Compare the blame sense, where a fault is responsibility for one event.
- 6A mistake or wrong act, such as an error in a piece of work or a minor misdeed.
The examiner took points off for each fault in grammar and punctuation.
The choir sang the whole program without a fault, even in the hardest passages.
UsageOften in without a fault or without a single fault, meaning perfectly.
- 7An abnormal connection or break within an electric circuit that disrupts its intended operation.
The protective relay tripped the moment a fault appeared on the line.
Insulation breakdown is a common cause of faults in high-voltage equipment.
Similarmalfunction, break
Note
Electrical engineers locate a fault on a line or in equipment. In this sense, current either takes a path the circuit was never designed to offer or is cut off by a break. The fault belongs to the circuit rather than to a person: it appears, protective relays trip in response, and engineers look for causes such as insulation breakdown.
Checked 6 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- Engineers locate electrical faults on lines and in equipment. selinc.com
- An electrical fault can also interrupt an intended current path, as in an open-circuit fault. technav.ieee.org
- Protective relays trip in response to electrical faults. eaton.com
- Insulation breakdown can cause an electrical fault. selinc.com
- 8Of rock, to fracture and undergo displacement along a plane in the Earth's crust.
The strata faulted under enormous tectonic pressure.
Ancient bedrock will fault when stress exceeds its strength.
UsageOften as a participial adjective: rocks faulted and folded, faulted strata.
Less common meanings
- 9An illegal or invalid serve in tennis that fails to start the point properly.
The umpire called a fault when her serve landed well beyond the service box.
A double fault handed his opponent the crucial break point.
UsageThe umpire calls a fault; two in a row make a double fault.
Note
Tennis defines the term with legal exactness. Julian Marshall's Lawn-tennis (1879) counts a serve as a fault if it drops in the net, beyond the service line, out of court or in the wrong court. He adds that a fault may not be taken, so the receiver cannot play it. The server normally serves again from the same court, and two in succession make a double fault.
- 10An exception or error condition arising within a running software program or process.
The developers traced the fault to a null pointer in the login module.
A memory fault forced the server to restart unexpectedly.
Similarerror, bug, exception, glitch
Note
Here a fault is the condition, not its cause: an exception raised while a program runs, often by the hardware when an access cannot go ahead. A modifier usually names the kind, as in a page fault or a memory fault. Many page faults are routine and handled silently by the system; others, such as a null pointer access, expose a bug.
- 11To go wrong by making a mistake or doing something wrong; to err.
Even the best riders fault at that fence when the ground is wet.
Even strong players fault on their serve when the pressure builds late in a close match.
UsageUsually fault on or at something: fault on a serve, at a fence; with an object, fault means blame instead.
- 12A penalty point assessed against a competitor in equestrian events such as show jumping.
Going a few seconds over the time allowed cost him a single time fault.
He accumulated eight faults over the course.
Similarpenalty
Note
Show jumping uses the word as a unit of score, counted with numbers. A refused obstacle earns four faults, and a round is summed up by its tally: four faults, eight faults. Unlike the tennis serve, which names the error itself, this fault is the penalty the error earns. Because faults are penalties, a smaller total is the better result.
Checked 6 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- A lower total of penalties is a better result. qld.equestrian.org.au
- 13An unwanted taste, smell or other defect in a food or drink, especially wine, often caused by spoilage or contamination.
The sommelier detected a fault in the bottle and sent it back.
Cork taint is among the most common faults found in wine.
Similartaint
Note
Tasters attach the word to the product: a wine fault, a cheese fault. Cork taint is the best-known wine fault. Godfrey Spence's Wine Tasting (2003) notes that no common wine fault is likely to do serious harm to health. It also calls a wine that smells of one faulty. A fault in this sense is more than a quirk of style. It is reason enough to stop tasting and send the bottle back.
Checked 6 Nov 2026 · 6 facts
- Cork taint is the best-known wine fault. santamargherita.com
- Godfrey Spence wrote Wine Tasting, first published in 2003. openlibrary.org
- The cited passage says common wine faults are unlikely to cause serious health problems; it does not exclude every lesser harm. en.wiktionary.org
- Spence describes a wine with a faulty smell as faulty. en.wiktionary.org
- A wine fault is a substantial defect rather than merely a stylistic peculiarity. en.wikipedia.org
- A faulty bottle can reasonably be rejected. omwines.com
- 14A want, lack, or absence of something.
one, it pleases me, for fault of a better, to call my friend
c. 1597, William Shakespeare, “The Merry Wiues of Windsor”Note
An obsolete sense best met in the phrase for fault of, meaning 'for want of'. Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 2 (c. 1598) has 'for fault of a better, to call my friend'. Nobody is blamed in that phrase. It sits nearest the word's Latin-derived sense of 'shortcoming', where a fault is simply something missing.
- 15Of a running process, to access a memory page that is not in physical memory, forcing the system to load it.
- 16A point where something stops being continuous because it is divided, interrupted, or disconnected there.
- 17An intrusion of foreign material, such as dirt or slate, occurring within a coal seam.
- 18A momentary loss of the scent that a hound has been tracking.
Showing meanings only.
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Origin
From Middle English faute, from Anglo-Norman and Old French faute, from Vulgar Latin *fallita ('shortcoming'), feminine of *fallitus, which took the place of Latin falsus, the past participle of fallō ('to deceive'). It displaced native Middle English schuld (from Old English scyld) and other early words for 'fault'.
Checked 6 Nov 2026 · 6 facts
- Fault derives from Middle English faute, from Anglo-Norman and Old French faute. en.wiktionary.org
- The French word derives from reconstructed Vulgar Latin *fallita, meaning 'shortcoming'. en.wiktionary.org
- *Fallita is the feminine of *fallitus; *fallitus was the replacement for falsus. en.wiktionary.org
- Falsus is the past participle of fallō. en.wiktionary.org
- Latin fallō means 'to deceive'. en.wiktionary.org
- It displaced Middle English schuld or schuild, descended from Old English scyld, and other Middle English words. en.wiktionary.org