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Faulty vs Breakdown - What's the difference?

faulty | breakdown |

As an adjective faulty

is having or displaying faults; not perfect; not adequate or acceptable.

As a noun breakdown is

a failure, particularly mechanical; something that has failed.

faulty

English

Adjective

(er)
  • Having or displaying faults; not perfect; not adequate or acceptable.
  • They replaced the faulty wiring and it has worked fine ever since.
    I don't think you can infer that from the premise. It's a faulty argument.
  • (obsolete) At fault, to blame; guilty.
  • * 1590 , Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene , II.iv:
  • Her faultie Handmayd, which that bale did breede, / Confest, how Philemon her wrought to chaunge her weede.

    Usage notes

    * Nouns to which "faulty" is often applied: goods, equipment, product, wiring, construction, memory, thinking, design, hardware, software, unit, part, component, assumption, reasoning, premise, gene, operation, technique, merchandise, circuit, code, analysis, posture, machine, method, habit, process, communication.

    Antonyms

    * faultless

    Derived terms

    * faultiness

    breakdown

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A failure, particularly mechanical; something that has failed
  • We saw a breakdown by the side of the road.
  • A physical collapse or lapse of mental stability
  • After so much stress, he suffered a breakdown and simply gave up.
  • Listing, division or categorization in great detail
  • ''Looking at the breakdown of the budget, I see a few items we could cut.
  • (chemistry) Breaking of chemical bonds within a compound to produce simpler compounds or elements.
  • A musical technique, by where the music is stripped down, becoming simpler, and can vary in heaviness depending on the genre.
  • * 1992 , En Vogue, My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It) (song)
  • And now it's time for a breakdown !
  • (sports) A loss of organization (of the parts of a system).
  • * {{quote-news
  • , year=2011 , date=September 18 , author=Ben Dirs , title=Rugby World Cup 2011: England 41-10 Georgia , work=BBC Sport citation , page= , passage=Georgia, ranked 16th in the world, dominated the breakdown before half-time and forced England into a host of infringements, but fly-half Merab Kvirikashvili missed three penalties.}}
  • (US, dated) A noisy, rapid, shuffling dance engaged in competitively by a number of persons or pairs in succession, as among the blacks of the southern United States.
  • (US, dated) Any crude, noisy dance performed by shuffling the feet, usually by one person at a time.
  • * (rfdate) New Eng. Tales
  • Don't clear out when the quadrilles are over, for we are going to have a breakdown to wind up with.
  • (US) Any rapid bluegrass dance tune, especially featuring a five-string banjo.
  • Foggy Mountain 'Breakdown'
  • * 1893 , (Mark Twain) "The Californian's Tale", in (1906)
  • Towards nine the three miners said that as they had brought their instruments they might as well tune up, for the boys and girls would soon be arriving now, and hungry for a good old fashioned breakdown . A fiddle, a banjo, and a clarinet - these were the instruments.
  • *
  • *
  • * {{quote-book, ???, title=Watch You Bleed: The Saga of Guns N' Roses, page=102,
  • books.google.com/books?isbn=1592403778, author=Stephen Davis, year=2008, passage=Izzy lays down some big chords while Slash plays the song's banjo breakdown of a theme.}}
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  • Synonyms

    * (musical technique) degradation

    Derived terms

    * breakdown lorry / breakdown truck * breakdown point * nervous breakdown

    See also

    * break it down