Poor quality; substandard workmanship.
"The fail was so dry that the sheep struggled to find any green pasture near it."
A piece of turf cut from grassland.
In plain English: A fail is a grade that shows you did not pass a test or class.
"He didn't let his first fail discourage him from trying again."
Usage: The everyday noun "fail" refers to a failure or unsuccessful attempt, not a piece of turf. You should use it to describe something that did not achieve its intended result, such as saying the test was a fail rather than a piece of grass.
stop operating or functioning
"The engine finally went"
"The car died on the road"
"The bus we travelled in broke down on the way to town"
"The coffee maker broke"
"The engine failed on the way to town"
"her eyesight went after the accident"
fall short in what is expected
"She failed in her obligations as a good daughter-in-law"
"We must not fail his obligation to the victims of the Holocaust"
become bankrupt or insolvent; fail financially and close
"The toy company went bankrupt after the competition hired cheap Mexican labor"
"A number of banks failed that year"
To be unsuccessful.
"He tried to fix the leaky faucet all morning but finally failed to stop the dripping water."
In plain English: To fail means to not succeed at doing something you tried to do.
"I failed my driving test yesterday."
Usage: Use "fail" to indicate that an attempt was unsuccessful or did not achieve its intended goal. You can say a plan failed, an exam failed you, or simply that someone failed to do something.
Unsuccessful; inadequate; unacceptable in some way.
"The manager decided to fail the application because the candidate's portfolio was far too weak for our standards."
In plain English: Failing as an adjective means not meeting the expected standard or quality of something.
"That was a fail, and we need to try again."
Usage: Although "fail" functions as a verb, it is not standardly used as an adjective to mean unsuccessful or inadequate; instead, use adjectives like "failed," "inadequate," or "unsuccessful." Reserve the noun phrase "a failure" for describing people or things that have not met expectations.
A surname.
"The local history book mentions that several famous politicians bore the surname Fail during the early twentieth century."
The word "fail" comes from the Latin verb fallere, which originally meant to deceive or disappoint. It entered English through Middle English and Old French, eventually evolving into its current sense of falling short of an expectation rather than actively deceiving someone.