fault

(fôlt)

a. A character weakness, especially a minor one.

b. Something that impairs or detracts from physical perfection; a defect. See Synonyms at blemish.

c. A mistake; an error: a grammatical fault; a fault in his reasoning.

d. A minor offense or misdeed: committed her share of youthful faults.

2. Responsibility for a mistake or an offense; culpability. See Synonyms at blame.

3. Geology A fracture in the continuity of a rock formation caused by a shifting or dislodging of the earth's crust, in which adjacent surfaces are displaced relative to one another and parallel to the plane of fracture. Also called shift.

4. Electronics A defect in a circuit or wiring caused by imperfect connections, poor insulation, grounding, or shorting.

5. Sports A service of the ball that violates the rules in tennis and similar games.

6. Archaic A lack or deficiency.

v. fault·ed, fault·ing, faults

v.tr.

1. To find error or defect in; criticize or blame: faulted the author for poor research; faulted the book for inaccuracies.

2. Geology To produce a fault in; fracture.

v.intr.

1. To commit a mistake or an error.

2. Geology To shift so as to produce a fault.

3. Sports To commit a fault, as in tennis.

Idioms:

at fault

1. Deserving of blame; guilty: admitted to being at fault.

2. Confused and puzzled.

find fault

To seek, find, and complain about faults; criticize: found fault with his speech.

to a fault

To an excessive degree: generous to a fault.

[Middle English faulte, from Old French, from Vulgar Latin *fallita, from variant of Latin falsa, feminine past participle of fallere, to deceive, fail.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

faulting - (geology) a crack in the earth's crust resulting from the displacement of one side with respect to the other; "they built it right over a geological fault"; "he studied the faulting of the earth's crust"

geological fault, fracture, break, fault, shift

geology - a science that deals with the history of the earth as recorded in rocks

fault line - (geology) line determined by the intersection of a geological fault and the earth's surface

crack, scissure, cleft, crevice, fissure - a long narrow opening

inclined fault - a geological fault in which one side is above the other

strike-slip fault - a geological fault in which one of the adjacent surfaces appears to have moved horizontally