Other forms: faults
Fault is about blame before it is about anything else. It was my fault, it is not her fault, whose fault was it. English hands responsibility around with this word all day.
It is also a thing wrong inside a machine or a system — an electrical fault, a fault in the design — and, in geology, a crack in the earth where the rock has slipped. In tennis it is a serve that missed. At fault means responsible; to a fault means excessively, and oddly it is only ever used about good qualities: generous to a fault.
1nounblameResponsibility for something that has gone wrong.~23%
“It was my fault, not hers.”
2nounfaultSomething wrong inside a machine or a system.~12%
“The engineers traced the fault to a loose wire.”
3noungeologyA crack in the earth's crust where the rock on each side has moved.~65%
“The fault runs the length of the valley.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 17 sentences found in the wild and placed 17 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
A fault is a shortcoming. Vulgar Latin fallita comes from Latin fallō, to deceive, the same root that gives false: a fault was first a failing that let you down.
Latin
falsus
Vulgar Latin
*fallita — shortcoming
Old French
faute
Anglo-Norman
faute
Middle English
faulte
English, today
fault
Built from
From Middle English faulte, faulte, from Anglo-Norman faute, Old French faute, from Vulgar Latin fallita (“shortcoming”), feminine of fallitus, in place of Latin falsus, perfect passive participle of fallō (“deceive”). Displaced native Middle English schuld (“fault”) (from Old English scyld (“fault”)), Middle English lac (“fault, lack”) (from Middle Dutch lak (“lack, fault”)), Middle English last (“fault, vice”) (from Old Norse lǫstr (“fault, vice, crime”)). Compare French faute (“fault, foul”), Portuguese falta (“lack, shortage”) and Spanish falta (“lack, absence”). More at fail, false.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA