Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

fallibility

US/fæləˈbɪləti/
nounC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,720 of 15,258neutral

Fallibility is the fact that anybody can get things wrong. Human fallibility, admit your fallibility.

Systems that assume it are safer than systems that assume care, which is the whole basis of modern safety design. Fallibility is easiest to admit in the past tense and hardest in the present.

Definitions of fallibility

  1. 1nounfallibilityThe fact that anybody can get things wrong.C1

    “The whole checklist exists because of human fallibility.”

fallibility is a quality.

Where it comes from

From fallible + -ity.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

fallibility in the wild

  • The apparent fallibility of our beliefs has led many contemporary philosophers to deny that knowledge requires certainty.

    Certainty

  • Dark Romanticism focuses on human fallibility, self-destruction, judgement, punishment, as well as the psychological effects of guilt and sin.

    Dark Romanticism

  • Marshall Hall was convinced of Wood's innocence, and also of the fallibility of the prosecution case.

    Camden Town Murder

  • HIGH explores the universal themes of truth, forgiveness, redemption and human fallibility.

    High (play)

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.