/ˈfeɪljər/
[noun] The fact of not achieving what you were trying to do, or a situation in which something stops working properly. It can describe a single unsuccessful event or a general lack of success.
The word 'failure' didn't exist in English until the 1600s — before that, people simply had no single word for it.
The story of 'failure' begins in Latin, with the verb 'fallere', meaning to deceive, to trick, or to cause someone to stumble. This root was powerful and productive, spreading through the Romance languages and leaving traces in dozens of words we still use today. From 'fallere' came the Old French verb 'faillir', which softened the sense of active deception into something more passive — to fall short, to be lacking, or to miss the mark. This shift is important: where the Latin implied someone was being tricked, the Old French suggested simply not being enough.
From 'faillir', Old French produced the noun 'faille', meaning a shortcoming or a gap — literally, a place where something gives way. English borrowed this idea and, using the common Anglo-Norman suffix '-ure' (which turns actions into states or results, as in 'departure' from 'departir' and 'pleasure' from 'plaisir'), constructed the word 'failure' sometime in the early 17th century. The suffix '-ure' came from the Latin '-ura', a productive ending that named the result or process of an action. So 'failure' is, at its bones, 'the result of falling short.'
Interestingly, 'failure' does not appear in Shakespeare's works, which tells us something about its youth as an English word. The Oxford English Dictionary traces its first recorded use to around 1643, placing it firmly in the middle of the 17th century — a period when English was rapidly expanding its vocabulary to describe legal, commercial, and civic life. In its earliest uses, 'failure' was especially common in legal and business contexts, referring to someone who failed to meet a financial obligation or carry out a duty. A merchant who could not pay his debts had committed a 'failure' — a meaning that survives today in phrases like 'business failure.'
The word shares its Latin ancestor 'fallere' with a remarkable family of English relatives. Latin 'fallere' → Old French 'faillir' → English 'fail', the direct verbal sibling of 'failure'. The same Latin root produced 'fallax' (deceitful), which became Old French 'fallace' and then English 'fallacy' — a false or misleading argument. Latin 'fallere' also produced 'falsus' (deceived, mistaken) → Old French 'fals' → English 'false'. And through a more dramatic path, Latin 'fallere' gave Italian 'fallire' (to fail, to go bankrupt), which contributed to the English legal term 'fault' via Old French 'faute', meaning a lack or defect.
Over the centuries, the meaning of 'failure' broadened considerably. From its early, narrow legal sense, it expanded to cover any kind of unsuccessful attempt, any breakdown in function — a mechanical failure, a crop failure, a failure of nerve. By the 19th century, it had also taken on a personal dimension, used to describe a person who had not succeeded in life, which gave it a harsher and more judgmental edge. This shift reflects changing cultural attitudes toward success and individual responsibility, particularly in 19th-century Britain and America, where the idea of self-made success made its opposite — personal failure — feel like a moral verdict rather than simply a circumstance.