Fail vs Breach - What's the difference?
fail | breach |
(label) To be unsuccessful.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-10, volume=408, issue=8848, magazine=(The Economist)
, title= (label) Not to achieve a particular stated goal. (Usage note: The direct object of this word is usually an infinitive.)
(label) To neglect.
To cease to operate correctly.
(label) To be wanting to, to be insufficient for, to disappoint, to desert.
* Bible, 1 Kings ii. 4
* 1843 , (Thomas Carlyle), '', book 3, ch. II, ''Gospel of Mammonism
*
, title=The Mirror and the Lamp
, chapter=2 (label) To receive one or more non-passing grades in academic pursuits.
(label) To give a student a non-passing grade in an academic endeavour.
To miss attaining; to lose.
* Milton
To be wanting; to fall short; to be or become deficient in any measure or degree up to total absence.
* Bible, Job xiv. 11
* Shakespeare
(archaic) To be affected with want; to come short; to lack; to be deficient or unprovided; used with of .
* Berke
(archaic) To fall away; to become diminished; to decline; to decay; to sink.
* Milton
(archaic) To deteriorate in respect to vigour, activity, resources, etc.; to become weaker.
(obsolete) To perish; to die; used of a person.
* Shakespeare
(obsolete) To err in judgment; to be mistaken.
* Milton
To become unable to meet one's engagements; especially, to be unable to pay one's debts or discharge one's business obligation; to become bankrupt or insolvent.
(uncountable) (label) Poor quality; substandard workmanship.
(label) A failure (condition of being unsuccessful)
A failure (something incapable of success)
A failure, especially of a financial transaction (a termination of an action).
A failing grade in an academic examination.
A gap or opening made by breaking or battering, as in a wall, fortification or levee; the space between the parts of a solid body rent by violence; a break; a rupture; a fissure.
* 1599 , , Henry V , act 3, scene 1:
A breaking up of amicable relations, a falling-out.
* Shakespeare
A breaking of waters, as over a vessel or a coastal defence; the waters themselves; surge; surf.
* Bible, 2 Sam. v. 20
* 1719 , :
A breaking out upon; an assault.
* Bible, 1 Chron. xiii. 11
(archaic) A bruise; a wound.
* Bible, Leviticus xxiv. 20
(archaic) A hernia; a rupture.
(legal) A breaking or infraction of a law, or of any obligation or tie; violation; non-fulfillment; as, a breach of contract; a breach of promise.
(figurative) A difference in opinions, social class etc.
* 2013 September 28, , "
The act of breaking, in a figurative sense.
* 1748 , David Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding , Section 3, § 12:
To make a breach in.
To violate or break.
* 2000 , Mobile Oil Exploration & Producing Southeast, Inc. v. United States, Justice Stevens.
(transitive, nautical, of the sea) To break into a ship or into a coastal defence.
(of a whale) To leap clear out of the water.
As nouns the difference between fail and breach
is that fail is while breach is a gap or opening made by breaking or battering, as in a wall, fortification or levee; the space between the parts of a solid body rent by violence; a break; a rupture; a fissure.As a verb breach is
to make a breach in.fail
English
Verb
(en verb)A new prescription, passage=As the world’s drug habit shows, governments are failing in their quest to monitor every London window-box and Andean hillside for banned plants. But even that Sisyphean task looks easy next to the fight against synthetic drugs. No sooner has a drug been blacklisted than chemists adjust their recipe and start churning out a subtly different one.}}
- There shall not fail thee a man on the throne.
- A poor Irish Widow […] went forth with her three children, bare of all resource, to solicit help from the Charitable Establishments of that City. At this Charitable Establishment and then at that she was refused; referred from one to the other, helped by none; — till she had exhausted them all; till her strength and heart failed her: she sank down in typhus-fever […]
citation, passage=That the young Mr. Churchills liked—but they did not like him coming round of an evening and drinking weak whisky-and-water while he held forth on railway debentures and corporation loans. Mr. Barrett, however, by fawning and flattery, seemed to be able to make not only Mrs. Churchill but everyone else do what he desired. And if the arts of humbleness failed him, he overcame you by sheer impudence.}}
- though that seat of earthly bliss be failed
- The crops failed last year.
- as the waters fail from the sea
- Till Lionel's issue fails , his should not reign.
- If ever they fail of beauty, this failure is not be attributed to their size.
- When earnestly they seek / Such proof, conclude they then begin to fail .
- A sick man fails .
- had the king in his last sickness failed
- Which ofttimes may succeed, so as perhaps / Shall grieve him, if I fail not.
Usage notes
* This is a catenative verb which takes the to infinitive . SeeSynonyms
* (to be unsuccessful) fall on one's faceAntonyms
* (to be unsuccessful) succeedDerived terms
* failure * fail-safeNoun
- The project was full of fail .
References
* * *breach
English
(wikipedia breach)Noun
(es)- "Once more unto the breach , dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead."
- There's fallen between him and my lord / An unkind breach .
- A clear breach''' is when the waves roll over the vessel without breaking. A clean '''breach is when everything on deck is swept away.
- The Lord hath broken forth upon mine enemies before me, as the breach of waters.
- I cast my eye to the stranded vessel, when, the breach and froth of the sea being so big, I could hardly see it, it lay so far of; and considered, Lord! how was it possible I could get on shore.
- The Lord had made a breach upon Uzza.
- breach for breach, eye for eye
London Is Special, but Not That Special," New York Times (retrieved 28 September 2013):
- For London to have its own exclusive immigration policy would exacerbate the sense that immigration benefits only certain groups and disadvantages the rest. It would entrench the gap between London and the rest of the nation. And it would widen the breach between the public and the elite that has helped fuel anti-immigrant hostility.
- But were the poet to make a total difression from his subject, and introduce a new actor, nowise connected with the personages, the imagination, feeling a breach in transition, would enter coldly into the new scene;
Synonyms
* break * rift * rupture * gapDerived terms
* breach of contract * breach of promise * breach of the peace * *Verb
(es)- They breached the outer wall, but not the main one.
- "I therefore agree with the Court that the Government did breach its contract with petitioners in failing to approve, within 30 days of its receipt, the plan of exploration petitioners submitted."