failure — OET

failure

noun

1 the failure of the assassination attempt:

lack of success, non-success, non-fulfilment, defeat, frustration, collapse, foundering, misfiring, coming to nothing, falling through;

informal fizzling out.

▷antonyms success.

2 every one of his schemes had been a failure:

fiasco, debacle, catastrophe, disaster, blunder;

British damp squib;

informal flop, botch, hash, foul-up, screw-up, washout, let-down, dead loss, dead duck, lead balloon, lemon, fail;

British, informal cock-up, pig's ear;

North American, informal snafu, clinker;

vulgar slang fuck-up;

British, vulgar slang balls-up.

▷antonyms success.

3 I was regarded by everyone as a failure:

loser, born loser, incompetent, non-achiever, underachiever, ne'er-do-well, disappointment, write-off;

no one, nobody;

informal no-hoper, flop, dud, non-starter, washout, dead loss, lemon.

▷antonyms success.

4 he felt guilty for what seemed like a failure in duty:

negligence, remissness, non-observance, non-performance, dereliction;

omission, neglect, oversight.

5 any crop failure could affect a farming business:

inadequacy, insufficiency, deficiency, lack, dearth, scarcity, shortfall.

6 he was puzzled by the failure of the camera:

breaking down, breakdown, non-function, cutting out, seizing up;

malfunction, faultiness;

crash;

informal conking out;

British, informal playing up.

7 the failure of several state-owned companies:

collapse, crash, going under, bankruptcy, insolvency, liquidation, close-down, closure, closing, shutting down, winding up, termination;

decline, failing, foundering, sinking, ruin, ruination;

informal folding, flop.

▷antonyms success.

word links	failure
kakorrhaphiaphobia fear of failure

failure Oxford Dictionary of English