English
failure
Failure comes from Anglo-Norman failer, from Old French faillir ‘to fail’, from Vulgar Latin *fallīre, from Latin fallō ‘to deceive’.
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEfallō1as fallere‘to deceive; to disappoint’
- Vulgar Latinc. 100–700 CE*fallīre1reconstructed
- Old Frenchc. 842–1400falir2as faillir‘to fail’
- Anglo-Normanc. 1066–1400failer2
- Englishearliest quotation 2012failure2
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
- 1 Wiktionary, Old French falir
- 2 Wiktionary, English failure
- Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 2012, Phil McNulty, Chelsea 2-1 Liverpool: “For Liverpool, their season will now be regarded as…”.
Lineage
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEfallōWiktionary, Old French faliras fallere‘to deceive; to disappoint’
- Vulgar Latinc. 100–700 CE*fallīreWiktionary, Old French falirreconstructed
- Old Frenchc. 842–1400falirWiktionary, English failureas faillir‘to fail’
- Anglo-Normanc. 1066–1400failerWiktionary, English failure
- Englishearliest quotation 2012failureWiktionary, English failure. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 2012, Phil McNulty, Chelsea 2-1 Liverpool: “For Liverpool, their season will now be regarded as…”
Word family
English words that share an ancestor with failure, grouped by the ancestor they share, most familiar first.
through Proto-Indo-European *(s)gʷʰh₂el- ‘to stumble’
- asphalt ← asphaltum ← ἄσφαλτος ← σφάλλω
through Proto-Italic *falsō
through Latin fallō ‘to deceive, beguile, trick, cheat, delude, ensnare, disappoint’
20 more relatives in the full family tree
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Today it means
noun State or condition of not meeting a desirable or intended objective, opposite of success.
Sources
Sources: Wiktionary, “failure”; the older steps come from the Wiktionary entry for Old French falir. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.
Etymograph / Latin fallō / failure